Invasive Species (20 page)

Manhattan

“WE'VE LOOKED AT
this video, like, twenty-seven times since your brother sent it,” Jack said. Slumped in the chair at his desk, he was scowling. “And it pisses me off just as much this time as the first.”

He wasn't happy that the camera had mostly been aimed at the sky.

“The people who shot it had other things on their minds,” Sheila said.

“Yeah? Well, next time, hire a cinematographer. I heard there's quite a crowd of them in PNG.”

Sheila looked at him. “You of all people should know that we make do with what we've got.”

“Yeah.” He glowered. “Doesn't mean I can't piss and moan about it.”

Sheila had returned from Florida the day before. Trey had come straight from the airport to the office after his flight back from Australia, not even stopping at home to drop off his bag and change clothes. Now here they were, the three of them: Jack at his computer, Trey in a chair beside him, Sheila looking over their shoulders at the screen.

Together again, as if that made a difference.

Trey thought about his visit with his brother. At the airport in Cairns, Christopher had smiled and said, “Things go the way I think they will, you won't be able to spin around the globe so easily anymore.”

Trey had shrugged off the words, but now he was seeing the truth in them and wondering how he'd react. How would he handle waking up every day in the same place?

Sheila was looking at him. “You okay?”

He nodded. “Sure. Why?”

“You seem tired.”

Jack laughed. “The mighty Trey Gilliard with jet lag? After just eighty hours on airplanes over five days? You must be getting old.”

He looked up at the clusters of pins on the map. “I'm getting pisssed off. Those things are everywhere, and we still know damn-all about them.”

He grasped the arms of his chair. “We fucking need to get some fucking specimens of this fucking species, and fucking soon.”

“Yeah,” Sheila said. “But until then, what have we learned?”

Trey, who had been slumped in his seat, straightened. “Agiru says that the people of the Southern Highlands weren't the first in PNG to fight off the
stilmen
.”

“Makes sense,” Jack said. “Look at the map. The first arrivals to PNG most likely came by boat to the islands and ports, or via airplane to Port Moresby, which is also on the coast.” He shrugged. “Those are the places the thieves would colonize first, before moving up into the mountain valleys.”

“Plus the lowlands are hot and humid, friendlier turf for them,” Sheila said. “It must get cold in the highlands.”

“Though they seem able to withstand the cold pretty damn well.” Jack waved a hand. “Look at the fucking map. They can survive almost everywhere.”

Trey had only been half listening. Now he said, “My point is, how could those islands and villages have been battling the thieves, and no one has noticed?”

Jack went still for a second. Then he was bending over his keyboard. A moment later he said, “Here's how.”

It was a little article on CNN.com dated about a month earlier. Just two paragraphs under the headline, “Papua New Guinea Violence Flares Anew.”

Trey bent closer to look at the tiny type. The story was datelined Kambaramba, East Sepik Province. “‘This long-restive region was riven again by battles among different factions of the Kambot people,'” he read out loud. “‘Twenty-two were reported dead, local authorities said. The outbreak of violence follows others in Madang, Karkar Island, and elsewhere. Authorities blame the violence on heightened tensions following disputed parliamentary elections.'”

Jack looked impressed. “That's actually kinda brilliant,” he said. “If PNG is famous for anything, it's for tribal violence. Nobody would think twice about a report like this, and nobody would double-check.”

Sheila was nodding. “Another government wanting to hush up bad news.”

“Until the chief sent around this half-assed video and spilled the beans.”

“If it wasn't him, it would've been someone else.” She shrugged. “Governments always think they can hide things, and they're always wrong.”

“I have an idea,” Jack said. “They could pull their heads out of their asses and fight back, like the villages did.”

“Not all people are as fearless as the Huli, and governments are cowardly by nature. Most would prefer to ignore a problem and hope it becomes someone else's.”

Trey took a deep breath and said, “My brother believes that, in Australia at least, humans have already lost that war.”

Or at least he
thought
he said this. He saw both Jack and Sheila staring at him, and then Sheila was taking his arm and pulling him to his feet.

“I'm bringing you home,” she said.

He tried to shake her off. “I'm fine.”

“Sure you are.” Jack was standing there, too. “You look like one of the zombies from
Night of the Living Dead
, and not one of the handsome, debonair ones, either. And that last thing you said? It made zombie sense.”

He looked at Sheila. “Malaria?”

She shook her head. “He's cold, not feverish.”

“Home or hospital?”

She hesitated, then said, “Home first. Then we'll see.”

“Go.”

They went.

By taxi, or at least that was what Sheila told him later. But Trey couldn't have said one way or another, since as far as he could tell, he wasn't there.

*   *   *

HE ROUSED A
little when they went through the front door of his apartment. He was aware, at least. Aware of lying down, really more like falling. Of someone—Sheila—taking off his shoes and pulling a sheet up over him as he shivered and shook.

Then he lost some more time, with no idea whether it was minutes or hours. When he awoke, he was a little more alert and realized where he was. His bed.

But not his. It was Sheila's bed now. Its contours didn't match his body's anymore.

He was supposed to sleep on the sofa.

He saw that she was sitting on a chair beside the bed. He caught the expression on her face. Concern. Worry, rearranging itself into a smile when she saw he was awake.

“Hey,” he said.

She seemed to understand that. “Hey.”

He saw her stretch, as if her muscles were stiff and cramped. “I'm going to get myself a cup of tea. I'll get you one, too. You'll be okay for a minute without me?”

He nodded, watched her leave the room.

His room. Hers.

Why was he in here?

He'd ask when she came back.

*   *   *

BUT BY THE
time she did reenter the room a few minutes later, carrying two mugs and a steaming teapot on a tray, he'd forgotten what he'd been thinking about.

Her eyes were on him as she came through the door. He saw her stop so suddenly that the mugs clattered against each other, nearly toppling.

“What are you doing?” she said, in a tone of voice he hadn't heard before, hoarse, twisting upward in pitch at the end.

“Doing?” he said. His mouth felt fuzzy, his words indistinct in his ears. “I'm not doing anything.”

She put the tray down on the floor—another clatter—and was sitting on the bed beside him before he could move. He felt her grab his right hand, and only then did he realize that he'd been scratching his stomach under his shirt.

Sheila's face was a mask of horrified realization as she pushed the shirt up. He lifted his head off the pillow and looked down at his body.

They both saw it. The small swelling. The tiny black airhole.

Something moving beneath his skin.

“Oh, God,” Sheila said, her voice a gasp. “Oh, no.
Trey.
”

Albuquerque, New Mexico

JEREMY AXELSON SIGHED.

Here they were again. How many nights had been spent this way since the campaign started? A thousand? Ten thousand?

It felt like a million.

Axelson could probably have figured it, the real number, or close, if he'd wanted to. But why bother? It would just depress him, and right now his brain was fried extra crispy anyway. The last thing it needed was a math problem to solve.

A million nights. A million hotels. Not that it made a difference. Wherever they stayed, it always felt like the same room. You could only tell where you were by the subjects of the paintings hanging on the walls.

In Iowa the paintings showed towheaded kids among ripening fields of corn. Vineyards or the Golden Gate Bridge in northern California. Leaping dolphins in Miami. Here in Albuquerque? Mountains and canyons.

Of course, you didn't ever get the chance to see the actual scenery. Just the paintings.

The three of them were watching four televisions. Or not watching. The speech was over, and now it was time for the political consultants to offer their opinions, the spinners to spin, and the panelists in the studios to sit in middle-aged rows and pontificate.

The TVs were muted. Not that it mattered: Each of them, two men who'd pushed past fifty and a woman a decade younger, could have recited the words being spoken on-screen. No need to hear them.

“Guy puts me to sleep,” the rumpled, bearlike man sitting across from Axelson complained.

He wasn't talking about the anchors, the consultants, the spinners, or the panelists.

He was talking about the man who'd just given the speech. Sam Chapman.

The president of the United States.

“You say that every time,” Axelson pointed out.

“He does it every time.”

The woman—tiny, sharp-eyed—stirred in her chair. “If he does it another ninety times between now and November,” she said, “he's going to win.”

The three of them stared at the silent screens, and for a while nobody said anything.

Ron Stanhouse, the campaign manager. Chief pollster Melanie Hoff. And Axelson himself, tall, angular, with a narrow face and a beaklike nose and a general air of geniality belied by the glitter of intelligence and calculation in his eyes.

Axelson was the communications director. Which meant it was his job to make the world think that the smell arising from their campaign was imminent victory, not flop sweat.

Not their campaign. Tony's.

Senator Anthony Harrison, the man who, in two weeks, would be nominated to run for president against Sam Chapman.

And who, eight weeks later, was going to lose.

“Give me today's numbers,” Stanhouse said.

Hoff sighed. “Nationwide, likely voters, we're behind 49–43–8. Make them choose, it's 53–47. Likeliest screen, a little closer: maybe 52.2 to 47.8. Not good enough.” She grimaced. “You know all this. The numbers haven't budged in weeks.”

“Think they'll budge a little after tonight,” Axelson said.

Tonight the president had delivered what amounted to an out-of-season State of the Union speech from his desk in the White House. The supposed excuse was to reassure America over instability in the Mideast. The truth was that Sam Chapman knew that whenever he demonstrated the trappings of the presidency, his numbers went up.

The results of the first instant poll appeared on one of the screens.

More likely to vote for: 31%.

Less likely: 13%.

No difference or no opinion: 56%.

“Tomorrow's numbers will be worse,” Hoff said.

At the beginning of the cycle, Chapman had seemed vulnerable. The unemployment rate had risen in his first year and had stayed stubbornly high, gas prices had been spiking, the housing market continued in its endless stay in the doldrums.

And though he was still seen as likable—it was one of the things that had gotten him elected in the first place—nobody had ever claimed that the earth shook when he spoke. Support for him had been broad, but only an inch deep.

Almost by definition, Chapman was the kind of incumbent who might fall to a strong challenge. And among the usual gaggle of senators, ex-governors, and hopeless gadflies, Anthony Harrison, former governor of Colorado, had an excellent shot at the nomination.

That was why Stanhouse, Hoff, and Axelson had signed on with him.

Almost immediately, though, the breaks had started going the incumbent's way. None of the potential challengers, including Harrison, had emerged unscathed from a long, tedious, and expensive primary season. The recent laws allowing for nearly unlimited anonymous corporate donations had given even the fringiest wannabes life and staying power.

Another ex-governor had, as was her wont, gobbled up far more than her share of media oxygen before declining to run.

Now, at the end of the circus, as Harrison was finally emerging with the nomination, a skeleton or two had been unearthed from his closet. Nothing the campaign hadn't known about, and nothing they couldn't deal with, but still, the news had occupied too many cycles.

The point was: To defeat a sitting president, you had to get all the breaks. Or just one, if it was big enough.

But neither was happening for Harrison. For them.

“Swing states?” Stanhouse said.

Hoff shrugged. “Today we'd win Florida, Georgia, North Carolina. Colorado, of course. But we'd lose most of the others: Pennsylvania, Virginia, the industrial Midwest—maybe even Missouri.”

She switched her gaze to Axelson. “Your guys better write him one hell of a convention speech.”

When he didn't reply, she drained her drink, mostly just ice and water now, and got to her feet. Stretched, yawned, and walked to the door.

“Figure out a way to change the game,” she said, “and I'll give you better news.”

*   *   *

A KNOCK ON
the door.

Axelson didn't move. It was late, dark-night-of-the-soul late, but he was still up. He hadn't moved since Hoff and Stanhouse left, except once to freshen his drink and turn off three of the TVs. The television that was still on, tuned to TCM, was showing an old Bob Hope–Bing Crosby movie, the one where they went to the North Pole.

The Road to Utopia.
Axelson laughed and drank. Could he go along? Utopia was sounding pretty good right about now.

The knock came again. For a moment Axelson considered ignoring it. But he knew he wouldn't be able to hide from whatever news lay on the other side of the door. Not forever.

With a groan, he got to his feet, walked over, and swung the door open.

A young man stood in the hall. He was wearing a pinstriped gray suit, a crisply pressed sky blue poplin shirt, and a patriotic red tie. With his fair skin, open expression, and studious black-framed eyeglasses, he lacked only an American flag pin to be ready to appear on camera.

No, wait. He
was
wearing a flag pin, on the lapel of his suit jacket.

Perfect.

“Do you sleep in that getup?” Axelson asked him.

The young man smiled. “Gary Kuster, sir,” he said. “Can I talk to you?”

Axelson knew who he was. A member of the field staff, an advance man whose job it was to lay the groundwork for campaign appearances.

He was good at it, too. A rising star, keen minded, and not nearly as guileless as his fair-haired-boy looks would have you believe.

Axelson didn't move. “What about?”

He was tired. He didn't want to hear any more complaints. Nothing that this irritatingly bright-eyed boy had to say could possibly be of any interest, not tonight.

“Sir,” Kuster said, “I need to show you something.” He looked Axelson straight in the eyes. “Something that will win us the election.”

Axelson sighed. He'd outgrown dramatic pronouncements from underlings twenty-five years ago. They always thought they'd found the faux pas that would sink the opposition, the angle that no one else had seen. And they were always wrong.

He swirled the Scotch in his glass. It needed more ice. “Do I have to go somewhere to see this ‘something'?”

Kuster lifted his left hand. He was carrying an iPad. “No. Here's fine.”

Finally Axelson moved out of the doorway. As he fished the last shards of ice from the bucket, he watched Kuster push a button. The iPad lit up, revealing a YouTube page.

“What are you going to do,” Axelson asked, “show me rock videos?”

*   *   *

HE COULDN'T BELIEVE
it.

The guy
was
showing him videos. And not stuff of any interest, either. Not even old Allman Brothers performances, Bugs Bunny cartoons, or trailers for the movies that Axelson would miss this fall, when every minute would be spent staving off electoral humiliation.

Not even the cute amateur shit that he'd watched during the endless down hours every campaign had to endure. Cats running on treadmills, monkeys pulling dogs' tails, the guy who traveled all around the world dancing. (Axelson would have traded jobs with
that
guy in a heartbeat.) That old one, with the little kid biting the finger of the other little kid.

No. None of that. Videos of wasps.

Big wasps. Axelson had grown up in Texas, not that far from the Rio Grande, and the wasps down there, the cicada killers, they could be huge. But these ones looked different, skinny and black, with legs that made them look like they were half spider. These ones were spooky.

One of them crawled over a branch and stared at the camera. Axelson felt like it was looking right into him.

Damn spooky.

“What's the point?” he said.

Kuster didn't reply. The camera zoomed in so that the wasp's face filled the screen. Watching, Axelson could have sworn that he could see intelligence in its gaze. The way its mouth moved, it looked like it was licking its chops.

When the video ended, he said, “Okay, you've put me off my feed. Now tell me why the hell I should be interested.”

Kuster smiled at him. “I told you. These bugs are going to win us the election.”

Then he began to explain. His voice staying calm, but with an edge of excitement, of triumph, behind it. Euphoria.

Sometimes he paused to show Axelson evidence. Proof. Another video, a newspaper article, notes he'd made on a legal pad.

At first Axelson remained skeptical, out of sorts. Then his attention sharpened. He found himself leaning over Kuster's shoulder, peering in at the screen or down at the neat handwriting on the pad. His heart thumped, and again.

And then, finally understanding, seeing exactly where this was going, Axelson felt his legs get weak. He sat down, his drink forgotten. But he still didn't say anything. He just listened. Listened for more than an hour, until Kuster was finally done.

At last the young man said, “That's it. What do you think?”

Axelson cleared his throat. He wondered what his face looked like.

“Who else knows?” he asked. His voice was scratchy. “Who else knows the whole story?”

“No one,” Kuster said. “No one else has put it together yet, much less figured out the White House's role. Just you and me.”

Axelson was already reaching for his phone. “Let's fix that,” he said.

He knew what he'd just heard. He understood what it meant.

He punched a button and said, “Ron? Wake up and get back in here. Melanie, too. Everybody. The whole senior staff. Roust 'em.”

Normally Stanhouse would have bitched about it. It was late, it'd been a bad day, and why the hell was it his job to track everyone down? But he merely said, “Okay,” and disconnected.

He recognized that tone in Axelson's voice.

Soon enough, no more than fifteen minutes later, everyone was there. In rumpled clothes, some of them still rubbing their eyes, but ready. Eager. It was amazing how fast a staff's morale could turn around, if they sniffed a change in the wind.

Axelson surveyed the room. A dozen faces. His team.

Then he looked back at Kuster, who was still sitting in the same chair, and said, “Go over it again.”

Kuster smiled and began.