Underground Airlines(97)

It was still open, as a matter of fact, and it was in my pocket with the open end up. I took it out and held it up in the dim rain-flecked moonlight. A small flask of sturdy plastic or polystyrene, full of clear liquid, secured with a screwed-on cap. Still floating in there, after all this time—after Luna smuggled it out, got it into William Smith’s coat, after Billy panicked and stuffed it in his fridge, after I had it and Morris had it and Cook had it and I had it again—still floating inside that thin flask was something else. Something microscopically small.

“Well?”

Mr. Bridge’s lips were pursed. They disappeared beneath his mustache. “I’m not a scientist.”

“Yeah. Me neither.”

I waited. Bridge could see what the deal was now. I wasn’t turning anything over without this conversation.

“What it is…my understanding is…that what it is is cells.”

“Human cells?”

“Yes and no.”

I aimed my gun at him. “Bridge.”

His face contorted. He didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t know whether he could. Of course I already knew what it was. I had been to Saint Anselm’s. I had found Father Barton, as I expected to, in a wretched state, his man Cook having mysteriously disappeared along with his means of tracking me. I got the drop on Mr. Maris, whispered sweetly to him a little with my weapon in the small of his back, and then me and Father Barton had done some talking. I had done just what I was doing now—held the gun in one hand and this tiny vial in the other, held both before his pale staring eyes, and said to him, this isn’t the financial records of any f*cking Malaysian shell company, is it?

At gunpoint he had told me what it was, admitted what he had known all along—that he had sent me down there, run me through all that he had run me through, run Kevin through all that he had run Kevin through, all on the basis of a lie. The truth was too heavy, too serious to be trusted to the poor dumb Negroes he was working so hard to save. Another layer, another layer down.

I had held the damn thing up in front of that monster and threatened to destroy it—burn it before he could show it to anyone. I had flicked my cigarette lighter open beneath the envelope until his soft young face melted with fear. Please, he had said. Please…

And now here was Bridge, the same desperate expression, the same worried Please. He rubbed the corner of his mustache.

“They are hybrid cells, Victor. From eggs that are…eggs that have been harvested from human subjects.”

“Slaves.”

He sighed. He looked up toward the statue, as if the Martyr would provide him some relief. I just wanted it. I needed it. I needed for him to say it.

“What is it, Mr. Bridge?” Now I was walking, coming down the steps toward him, gun in one hand, envelope in the other. “You think I’ll back out? You think this is the one thing I can’t live with? After everything I’ve lived with, you think I can’t live with this?”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. GGSI has a medical facility. Okay? The egg is harvested from a human subject, and—my understanding—the nucleus is removed. And then new material, not new, but taken from other subjects…look, what they’re working on, on making…” He wasn’t a scientist. It sounded insane, but it was true, so he said it. “On making people. It’s hard to understand.”

But I did understand. I understood better than he did. In that black building on the map, auxiliary to the Institute for Agricultural Innovation, they were taking girls like Luna and stealing their eggs, separating out the DNA, forming hybrids, breeding cell lines.

Barton had had his own language for it, had turned it all into biblical horror: They are casting themselves as God. They are bringing forth the stuff of life.

I put it more plainly still, my gun still trained on Bridge’s wide midsection. “They’re growing slaves.”

“Well,” he said, “they are trying.”

It was coming up, my anger, my disgust, my wild red feeling. It was coming up fast and I knew it was going to and I struggled to keep my voice even. Keep it calm.

“What’ve the marshals got to do with this?”

“Elements within my service,” he began, and from the way he was looking at me, weighing me, I could tell he was trying to find my breaking point. See how much I could take. “Not me, mind. But others—have been involved. In helping to make arrangements to provide some of the necessary technology.”

“Arrangements.”

Bridge nodded. “Again, not me. We are a large organization, Victor, with many layers. But yes. If the population held in bondage, if they were—not technically…people any longer. Certain constitutional issues, certain political issues…would be resolved.”

I tilted the vial one way and then another in my hand, felt the small movement of the liquid. This is what Barton wanted to publicize, this is what the marshals were desperate to have kept secret: not some banking irregularities, not fiscal collusion. This. The next step. They’d been improving the machinery of slavery for two centuries, inventing new tortures to make people work harder and longer. Stripping slaves of their names, their families, their spirits. This is where it went next: people with no bloodline, people with no past and no future, people with no claim to freedom. These strong hands belong to you…Hands and back and spirit, too…