Vox(65)

“Black,” I say, returning the smile. If he’s feeling magnanimous, why not join the party, even if his eyes do remind me of the lab mice Lorenzo injected this morning?

He relays the order to Andy, his assistant, and sits in the chair behind his desk, the chair that he’s ratcheted up so that he looks larger. It must be painful, I think, to sit like that without your feet touching the floor.

“So, progress?”

I check the clock above Morgan’s head. “We’ll know in about thirty minutes. Where’s Lin?”

The non sequitur slows him, as if someone has just offered him ice cream, then given him a choice between anchovy and tuna. As he processes what I’ve said, the corners of his mouth turn, first down, then straight, then up again. “That’s terrific. Think we’ll be ready to roll tomorrow?”

“Our first subject is scheduled for Monday.”

“Change it to tomorrow,” he says. Then, “If you can, Jean. Only if you can.”

I take the cue to play nice. He wants something; I want something. “Absolutely.”

Morgan relaxes now, and Andy knocks softly before bringing in a tray.

“Let me,” I say, tipping the carafe over two white mugs with a blue P emblem. “Listen. I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier.”

“We’re all under a great deal of stress, Jean. Peace.”

Sure. Peace. I almost remind Morgan that the word for “peace” and the word for “submission” are virtually identical in some languages, but there’s no point in confusing him. I need the bastard too much.

“I have a small favor to ask. My mother’s suffered a burst aneurysm. Left hemisphere. Wernicke’s area.”

Morgan’s eyes narrow, but he says nothing.

It’s hard to tell whether these eyes convey concern or sympathy or distrust, so I press on, feeling my way one step at a time. “I was wondering, since we’re starting the clinical trials anyway, could we put her on the subject list?”

“Of course we can. Bring her in tomorrow and set it up.”

“Well,” I say, “that’s going to be difficult. She’s in Italy.”

He sits back, one elbow on each of the chair’s armrests, his right ankle resting on his left knee, as if he’s trying to occupy as much space as possible. “Italy,” he repeats.

“Yes. You know, land of pizza and ass-kicking coffee.” Unlike the crap Andy brought in, I think.

“I have a problem with that, Jean. Relations between us and Europe are”—he searches for a word—“not good.”

Just like Morgan. Of all the English terms he has to pick from—“tenuous,” “strained,” “problematic,” “tense,” “adverse,” “hostile,” “unpropitious”—Morgan chooses “not good.”

He continues, his eyes moving slightly up and to the left, a sure sign he’s creating a lie, or holding back, but I don’t think Morgan’s aware of the subconscious tic; most liars aren’t. “You understand, don’t you, Jean? I mean, we can’t just send a valuable product like this over to Europe. Not with the current climate.”

My coffee tastes more bitter with each sip. “What if you sent me? I could administer the serum and—”

“Ha!” The single syllable is more bark than word. “You know the travel rules,” he says, softening, but only slightly. “No way.”

How could I have forgotten? “All right, then. Lorenzo. He can travel.”

Morgan shakes his head, as if he’s about to explain a difficult mathematical construct to a child, a concept so far outside my capacity to understand that he thinks breaking it down would be useless. “He’s Italian, Jean. A European citizen.”

“He’s one of us,” I say.

“Not really.”

“So that’s it?”

He starts shuffling papers on his desk, Morgan’s classic this-meeting-is-now-over tell. “Sorry, Jean. Call me when the mice are ready, okay?”

“Sure.” I turn to leave his office. “By the way, where’s Lin?”

“No idea,” he says, and his eyes move up and to the left.





FIFTY-FIVE




As I ride the elevator down to the basement, a series of horrible vignettes flashes through my mind.

Doctors in France, their brains intact in all but one place, are unable to process the instructions on a bottle of hand sanitizer, let alone talk to their patients, write prescriptions, perform surgery. German stockbrokers will happily tell their clients to Dig! instead of Buy, and Fork! instead of Sell. An airline pilot in Spain, charged with the safe delivery of two hundred passengers, interprets the warnings of an air traffic controller as a raunchy joke, and laughs as her craft dives into Mediterranean waters. And so on, and so on, until an entire continent is drowning in a languageless chaos, ripe to be taken over.

“You let me know if you need anything,” Sergeant Petroski says when the elevator reaches the first floor. He steps out, not looking back, and takes his post at the checkout point as five men file in through the main doors.

So. Lorenzo and I aren’t the only ones working today. Quelle fucking surprise.

I continue down to the basement, every second feeling like another step on a journey to hell. Inside the lab, Lorenzo is sitting before two cages of mice, studying paperwork.