Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(49)

"Senator, that response was exactly what we anticipated. However, that does not mean that we need to go along with their wishes. I believe that once the world community is able to evaluate, for themselves, the beneficial results of the nano-serum, the response will turn to one of gratitude."

Senator Conally pursed his lips. "That seems to be the administration's theory. I'll come back to this line of questioning later. For now this committee recognizes the senator from Alabama."

By the time Senator Conally gaveled the hearing to a close and made his way to his car, darkness had fallen. As he pulled into his parking space at the Watergate, the first drops of rainfall had splattered his windshield, just enough to make the wipers squeal in protest as they smeared the dampness around.

Although every other senator was rushing to get out of town for the long holiday weekend, Conally was just glad to step inside his D.C. apartment and close the door behind him. Three years divorced, with two adult children who had moved to L.A. left him with the one thing he currently desired: a peaceful evening away from the Washington dogs of war.

Flipping on the light, Conally removed his coat and tie, hanging them neatly in the closet before making his way to the wine rack. He let his eyes linger on the labels as he lifted several bottles, replacing each in its spot until he found what he was looking for, a nice bottle of Alexander Valley Cyrus.

Swirling the red wine in the glass, he settled back in his reading chair and took a slow sip, letting the taste of the wine linger on his tongue. The way things were going, he wanted to savor every small pleasure.

The truth was that Conally was scared. His father had been a senator during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Conally remembered his old man telling about the terror that had gripped the capital in those days. Hell, the prospect of all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union would scare the shit out of anybody. But it couldn't scare him any more than this.

The president of the United States had lost his f*cking mind. He had opened a box that even Pandora would have left untouched.

Conally took another sip and leaned further back in the chair. Two weeks of hearings by numerous House and Senate committees had only slowed the pace at which events were progressing. And despite that a number of groups had come out in frenzied opposition to the release of the alien nanotechnology, many of them from the base of the president's own party, most of the public remained enthralled with the prospect of a cure for all ills. Conally's own polls showed public support for the president's policy running at 67 percent.

Conally had to admit that it was damn hard to argue that letting sick people die was better than saving them. Hell, if he had a fatally ill child, he'd be first in line for the stuff.

The military was against releasing it for obvious reasons. It wanted to inject American soldiers with the super juice and to hell with everyone else. The idea that he was on the same side of the argument as the military brass was enough to make Conally physically ill. And even though his reasons were entirely different, it made for a strange alliance, the anti-war liberal and the warrior elite.

Conally rose to his feet, moving to look out his window. Beneath him, the Potomac wound its way toward the Atlantic Ocean, the lights of several boats glittering in the distance. Beautiful. Dear Lord, would it be this beautiful when nobody could die?

When he was a small boy, Conally's father had gotten him one of the Magic 8-Ball toys, the kind you held upside down and asked a question. Then when you turned it back upright, an answer would pop into the window. In his mind's eye he could see his own answer pop into the window.

"Not Bloody Likely."

Conally knew that the nanites did not make a person immortal. They were just efficient little machines, scurrying around in your bloodstream, cleaning arteries, repairing damaged cells, killing infections, and fixing anything that didn't match the body’s DNA encoding. They didn't make you immortal, just damn hard to kill.

What was going to happen to the world's population as those things were injected into the bloodstreams of the third world's prolific breeders? No more disease. But what about starvation? And how much longer would people live? A hundred and fifty? Two hundred? Shit. There wouldn't be room to walk.

War would take on a whole new violence. You couldn't just shoot people, they would just get back up and keep coming. You would need to dismember, behead, or vaporize your enemy.

His committee had been asking those questions of the president's team all week. And the answers that were forthcoming provided little solace. To a person they had sat in their seats and testified that all new advances presented challenges, but these new ones, like those before them, would be resolved. Besides, they had said, when you had a technology that would cure the world's diseases and save millions of lives, wouldn't denying that cure be worse than the crimes of Hitler and Stalin?

As much as Conally hated to admit it, he couldn't come up with a good counterargument. Certainly not one that carried that kind of weight.

Taking one last swallow of the red wine, Conally inhaled deeply, then turned and picked up his worn King James Bible from the table. Closing his eyes, he murmured a brief prayer for inspiration and let the Bible fall open to a random page. Opening his eyes once again, a single verse jumped out at him.

"Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."





48


Heather opened her eyes, turning her head to glance at the glowing digital numerals on her bedside clock, even though it was entirely unnecessary. She knew precisely what time it was: 4:47 a.m.