Out of Touch (19 page)

“And the Mayans used blood sacrifice too.” Sammy pointed enthusiastically, “They found pictures of them cutting people’s throats on top of that pyramid, right there.”

Sammy’s mother turned away, and Reggie was glad to see Sarah returning.

“No one knows just how or why. But I think they knew blood was powerful. I mean, people lose too much of it, they die. So if you want to make your gods more powerful, of course you’d give them blood –“

              “You could be a professor someday. You give a good lecture.” Reggie smiled at the boy, wondering if all children were like that.

              Then to Sarah, “Is everything arranged?”

             
“Yeah,” she nodded to Sammy’s father, “Thanks for the phone.”

Returning it, Sarah showed the arm extension of a ballet dancer, and Reggie was eager to be off with her. They both thanked the man again. He would probably never know how close he’d come to international intrigue.

Then Reggie steered them toward the paths where they’d watched monkeys earlier. “How long do we have?”

“Two hours, back where our driver dropped us off.”

“Excellent.” Reggie glanced around to assure no one was watching, then swung Sarah over his shoulder and abducted her into the jungle. They had two hours free without worries that the CDC would hunt them down. Time for an unworried vacation.

There was no way to know if their escort was a telepath. Reggie hoped Tom had been right and his mind was now telepathy-proof. He tried to watch an in-flight movie, but none of the two hundred choices appealed to him. The news station was a fifteen-minute loop covering a London rally about toxoplasmosis inoculations and giving obsolete stock market figures. They’d been ushered through some back rooms in a Mexican airport where they and their belongings had been thoroughly searched, but now they were passengers on a normal, commercial flight to San Francisco. The man traveling with them, who looked like he should be wearing a suit, even if he wasn’t, had made it clear he didn’t wish to chat. Reggie usually talked to people on airplanes. When he flew alone, he’d talk to strangers, amused and amazed at what people would tell while traveling. But on this flight, he felt constrained from talking to anyone.

He studied the airline’s shopping magazine. It offered a vacation pet feeder that could adjust serving size based on the pet’s weight when it stepped up to the dish. There were UV-blocking umbrellas and mosquito repelling picnic blankets. Reggie wondered what happened to such items if no one bought them and how many of them might make useful donations to people in poorer parts of the world. He pictured an Ethiopian family using the picnic blanket and umbrella as they ate their plain rice. Then the pet feeder brought forth ghoulish pictures of automated human food aid. He was not amused.

Being back in the U.S. was not reassuring as their escort delivered them to a tall government office building on a corner near downtown.
The front desk called to the top floor, and someone from CDC was sent down. This nondescript man in a cheap suit nodded politely and took them all the way up and to the end of the hall, where he introduced Mr. Fred Delgado.

Delgado’s cramped, corner office stank of corn chips and old coffee. The desk and chairs could have been salvaged from any public building any time in the last century. Delgado himself was a heavyset bureaucrat, probably in his late fifties, who had one of the baggiest faces Reggie had ever seen. It was mesmerizing, the way bags of skin on the bureaucrat’s jowls swung back and forth as he spoke. Was this a statement against plastic surgery or deliberate sag enhancement? Perhaps the man raised bulldogs and idolized their appearance.

Thinking of dogs, Reggie imagined himself as Toto to Sarah’s Dorothy. From the way the bureaucrat focused on Sarah and ignored him, it was clear that in this place Reggie was considered less than human, or less than whatever. Another man might have been insulted, but Reggie fixated on Toto pulling back the wizard’s curtain.

“Do you know anything about your maternal grandfather?” Delgado was asking Sarah.

“I know my relatives have suspicions, but my Mother never said anything.”

“And she was cremated?”

“Yes.” Sarah slouched back in her seat. Mr. Delgado glanced at a paper on his desk.

“What about your father?”

“I suspect he’s not the person named on my birth certificate, but that’s all.”

             
“Was he a sperm donor?”

             
“What?” Sarah sat up like a student surprised by an interesting lesson.

             
“Did your mother ever use the name Molly Bernard?”

             
Sarah began to laugh. Reggie had the unpleasant feeling he’d missed a joke. The bureaucrat looked unamused as well.

             
“Sarah Bernard. That’s Sarah Bernhardt’s real name. My mom always said I was named after her. But what if I’d been a boy?”

             
Delgado stood and unlocked a battered file cabinet in the corner. He pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to Sarah with one thick, meaty hand.

             
“That’s her handwriting,” Sarah said, “Even her real birthdate, June 8, 1964. So do you know who my father was?”

             
“Either Chris Morton or his son, James. They ran Family Fertility Services until Chris died in ’08, and we took it over. They personally provided the sperm for over two thousand of their clients, a sort of private effort to bias the gene pool. Not a bad idea, although we’re much more efficient.”

             
“They were telepaths?”

             
Delgado nodded. “So you’ve got that on one side and at least half from your mother, but no telepathy?”

             
“Nope.”

             
“Well, we’re still trying to figure out telekinesis. We’ll get some blood samples and go from there. One other thing,” the bulldog looked at Reggie, “How did you close your mind?”

             
“Excuse me?” Reggie played Toto to a bulldog wizard.

             
“Don’t give me that innocent look. Before you left the states, your mind was as open as any. Now it’s not.”

             
“A little knowledge and a strong will?”

             
The big man scowled at Reggie as if he was an uppity lab rat. But he led them down the hall to a laboratory room without challenging the explanation.

             
The lab was bright and smelled strongly of ammonia. The money not spent on Delgado’s office had clearly been spent here. The walls were sectioned off with workstations and large, pristine machines, all currently unused. A computer near the center connected to a 3D-rendering device Reggie had seen demoed just last month. The floor shone.

             
“Watkins, I need full blood work-up and GPS on both of these.”

             
“Wait,” Sarah interrupted in the doorway. “Why Reggie? And when do I get to meet with the Chens?”

             
“Look, dear. You and your boyfriend both know highly classified information, which means you need security clearances. DNA check and GPS implant are standard. If we choose to count you as munitions, regs get even stricter. So don’t push your luck. You can meet with your friends as soon as you’re done here.”

             
Sarah looked panicked, but Reggie knew she planned to cooperate. The GPS part she’d been expecting. Then she looked at the med tech and cringed so hard her eyes shut.

             
“Oh, hi. Sorry ‘bout the car,” she stammered.

             
Watkins laughed. “It’s okay. I got some trouble for that. But then you eluded the whole government for two weeks. So I feel vindicated. Livens things up a bit.”

             
Turning to Reggie, he extended a hand. “Hi, I’m Matt Watkins.”

             
“Reggie Malone.”

             
“You hear how she trapped me in a car?”

             
“No.”

             
“Good. Then my reputation is safe. Hold out your arm.”

             
Watkins applied local anesthetic to Reggie’s and then Sarah’s left forearms. Next he took sample vials of blood from each.

             
“Okay. Anesthetic should be ready now. Who wants to be first in the machine?”

             
“What’s it do?” Sarah asked.

             
“You put your arm here.” He gestured at a smooth, white apparatus about the size of a bread maker with a cylindrical hole through the center. “I fasten it down. The top part lowers, a little laser cuts, GPS goes in, and I slap on a bandage. In a couple weeks, it looks like this.” Watkins showed them a scar on his arm less than a quarter centimeter long.

             
Sarah nodded. “I’ll go first.”

Reggie felt a brief stab of masculine pride, especially as Watkins waved Sarah to the machine with some exaggerated pomp, but he figured this was her game to play. She received her implant and let the teep take a blood sample without incident.

On his turn, Reggie tried to think stoic thoughts as the machine clamped on to immobilize his arm. There was a view screen so he could watch the laser incision, see the chip inserted. He felt a sharp pinch, then wondered if it was psychosomatic. When his arm was finally freed, it only hurt where the clamps had held him still. The incision site was numb, and merited just a standard size band-aid. 

Then Watkins took them back to Delgado who in turn took them past the lab to a conference room at the other end of the hall. He waved them in and shut the door.

Sarah’s face split with a nervous smile as she scanned the room. “Hi everyone, I hope I haven’t caused you too much trouble. This is Reggie. Reggie, this is Mei Mei Chen, her children, Lisa and Robert, and her nephew, Howard.”

Reggie said, “Hello,” as Mei Mei stood and glided over to clasp Sarah’s hands. She was like a mother bird, scooting across the nest, checking the plumage of a returning, wayward chick. Lisa and Robert tracked her with their eyes, the dutiful chicks left behind, but Howard leaned away. He was seated across the table from the others and his eyes were on Reggie as Mei Mei spoke to Sarah.

“No, let me apologize. It was my idea to visit your relatives, my responsibility. I can’t believe you turned yourself in.”

Reggie wanted to dislike the Chen’s. Sarah’s ties to this family had
been built behind his back and had dragged him into danger just when safety in Thailand beckoned. But Mei Mei with Sarah seemed maternal, maybe Sarah needed that, and Reggie couldn’t begrudge it.

He focused himself as her vigilant sentinel as they sat around a long, rectangular table. Sarah chose a seat to the right of Howard, facing toward the only obvious video camera in the room. Reggie sat next to her, facing the Chens, but keeping a special eye on Howard, who leaned in toward the group now that Sarah was near.

“There’s no way I could live in this country, other than to turn myself in. There are probably few places in the world I could go. That’s a lot to give up.”

Sarah leaned forward with her right arm on the table, and Reggie could barely see the words picked out in red, on the underside, away from the camera.
Want to escape?

Howard’s mouth fell open when he saw, not subtle, but at least he didn’t say anything.

“Why did you want to meet with us?” Lisa asked.

Howard’s gaze was now fixed on Mei Mei. By the time Sarah said, “I wanted to know if you were safe,” none of the Chen’s seemed to be listening.

Finally Mei Mei said, “Yes. Yes, it’s good of you to check on us.”

Sarah’s arm now sported different words.
Leave country? Now?

“I’m glad to have a chance to meet you all,” Reggie said to cover the silence. “I’ve heard a lot about you, and I’m glad Sarah wasn’t pulled into this alone.”

“Yes, it’s better to work together,” Mei Mei said with a nod, and a glance at Sarah’s arm, which was now blank and which Mei Mei could never have read from her side of the table.

Sarah took a deep breath and seemed to visibly shiver.

Howard, who had been rubbing his hands together on the table, said, “We’re with you now. Whatever happens. Is there more you wanted to ask us?”

Suddenly there were loud sirens in the hall. Sarah burst from her seat, and everyone followed her lead. “Stay together. That’s a fire alarm. We’ll need to take the stairs, quickly.”

Sarah pushed open the door of the conference room. Delgado was standing outside yelling orders down the hall. Sarah yelled above the sirens, “Is it a fire?”

At the same time she covered the few steps to the exit at the end of the hall and pulled open the door marked “stairs.”

“Yes, but don’t worry –“

“Are you crazy? We’re sixteen floors up! We’ve got to get out of here.” Sarah all but pushed her friends through the door as she spoke. Reggie hesitated, not willing to go without her. She moved to follow him out.