Believe it or not, we're trying to make it easier.' They were all looking at me like I was an unstable psycho.
'Then let me see Mr. Cowper!'
'Of course. But in order to do that, you're going to have to help us question him. He won't speak to us, and we very much need to know what he knows. We think he might talk to you.'
'About what?'
'About the 'Tonic.' The corrective to Agent X. Come this way.'
She led me through the office and into a dark doorway, flicking on the lights. We were in a storage room filled with oblong metal boxes, all propped upright. They could have been sturdy lockers, but somehow I just knew they were caskets. It was not cold enough in there to preserve a body, so my immediate thought was that they were empty, being held in reserve for the men whose names were inscribed on them: Klaus Manfred Van Oort, Roger Danforth Eakins, Marcus Hugh Sudbury-Wainwright. There were hundreds of them, many with foreign lettering-Russian, Chinese, Arabic names.
'What is this?' I asked nervously, scanning for the words 'Fred Cowper.' It occurred to me I didn't even know his middle name.
In the sunny tones of a real-estate agent, Stevens said, 'This is our little morgue.'
'You told me he wasn't dead!'
'I'm sorry-no one's dead in here. We've just cemented their status as Moguls.'
Dr. Stevens went to a random coffin belonging to one Charles Wesley Cox, unlocked it with a key, and opened the burnished door. My hackles rose, but inside was a body encased in some hardened resin, a plastic mummy with a metal pipe protruding from its mouth, inert as a fossil. Then I heard a thin wheezing sound bubbling up the tube.
'Mr. Cox here passed away last October, but he is exactly as he was when we administered the morphocyte, thank you very much.'
'He's one of them,' I said, aghast. 'But you said-oh my God. Mr. Cowper is one, too, isn't he? They're all Xombies!'
'We don't use that term here. And they're not Xombies in the sense you may be familiar with. Listen.' Ignoring my hysterics, she leaned over the pipe, and said, 'Mr. Cox? Can you hear me?'
I was flipping out to think that Cowper, my father, was gone, a ghoul like my mother and all the rest, but then my skin crawled to hear a muffled voice reply, 'I hear you, Dr. Stevens. Who's that with you?' The words scuttled quick as a cockroach in a paper bag.
'Oh my God,' I gasped.
'Just a visitor, Charles. I thought you might reassure her that you're quite comfortable.'
'Stop!' I cried.
'Comfortable,' crackled the paper-dry voice, tasting each syllable. It kept weirdly changing in pitch, weaving in and out of clarity. 'Comfort is how you cope, I know you make a womb out of trash and huddle there for comfort, I remember. Time is a cancer you can't cut off, heavier and heavier it shrivels you to nothing and you take refuge in hollow comfort.' He made a grotesque sucking noise. 'My only discomfort is that I can't save you, doomed pups fighting over a dead teat and I can't help you. Not from here. Not with talk.'
Dr. Stevens shut the lid and locked it. 'Wow, he's on a roll.'
'God,' I said, quaking. 'You just keep them in there?'
'We have no choice. One thing Agent X confers, along with everlasting life, is a powerful 'evangelical impulse.' They will do anything to 'convert' us, if you know what I mean, and they are tremendously slippery. You've seen it. This is the only practical way of handling them, long-term.'
'But he can talk! He's intelligent!'
'Yes, we've about perfected that part. It's a matter of controlling the brain damage caused by oxygen starvation while the microbe colonizes the body. It's only a few minutes of clinical death, but without precautions, it leaves cognitive deficiencies-the 'Xombie' behavior you're so familiar with. The morphocyte eventually repairs the cerebral damage, but it can't restore personality. Keeping the mind intact is as simple as lowering brain temperature until full inoculation takes hold. About twelve minutes, on average.'
'Why do they keep attacking us?'
'Strangely enough, it seems to be an altruistic thing. They're just spreading their own gospel, so to say.'
'And the kissing? What's the kissing all about?'
'Ah, you've noticed that. Yes, we call that 'Downloading' or 'Expiration.' In a way, it's the opposite of the 'breath of life' used in CPR. Instead of delivering air to a person who has stopped breathing, it actively prevents the person from breathing while feeding them a dose of morphocyte-laden vapor. It guarantees a quick, successful transmission.'
'And people volunteer for this?'
'These were all very old or dying men. They didn't have anything to lose. You know what they say: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.' She gave me a shrewd look. 'But this is nobody's idea of heaven. I mean please. This is just a halfway measure. What these gentlemen went in there gambling on is that we would eventually perfect the treatment so they could come out someday and resume their lives as Moguls, only safe from disease, aging, and death. The ultimate golden parachute. But it didn't sit well with some people, including the head of the project. Dr. Miska sabotaged everything.'
'Sabotaged? How?'
'We think he might have been the one who let the morphocyte escape into the environment, and we know he stole the Tonic when he destroyed his lab and records and everything pertaining to Agent X, so that our chance of making the Mogul dream come true was almost sunk. But Dr. Miska was in a hurry, and he didn't do a perfect job. A lot of material he tried to erase from his hard drive was salvaged, as well as a test sample mounted on a slide.'
'And that's supposed to be the cure for Agent X?'
'Not so much a cure as a perfected strain, a kinder and gentler strain, one without the virulence and predatory mania conferred by this one. One that can be meted out to the righteous. It's the carrot to top all carrots, you see.'
'Carrot top?'
'Carrot and stick, reward and punishment-those are the only ways you get people to do things. The Moguls want the Tonic so they can motivate people with something that until now has been an exercise of pure faith. It's better than a cure, you understand. It's literally the Holy Grail-the promise of everlasting life! And we were expecting it to arrive on that submarine of yours, so you can see why everyone's pestering you so much.'
'You think Mr. Cowper knows where it is.'
'Well, somebody knows, and if you know what's good for you, you'll do everything you can to bring that information to light. Our division has jurisdiction over you only so long as we can promise results. Once Mogul steps in, it'll get ugly. That's not a threat, just a helpful hint.'
I shrugged helplessly, miserably. Hate was pounding in me like a drum. 'I'll try. Where is he?'
'Not in here. Follow me.'
We left the building and crossed to a different longhouse. This one had a heavy black curtain for a door, and a second one just inside. It was pitch-dark between the drapes, but once past the inner flap we entered a long narrow hall running down a row of dimly lit viewing windows.
'Don't be nervous,' said the doctor.
'I'm not.'
Each window was a porthole into a metal tank, and each tank contained a naked blue Xombie, mounted like an insect on an exhibit stand. Steel rods had been driven through their limbs, torsos, and even heads to hold them in place. Some were immersed in water or other liquids, some were in fogs of caustic gas, and some were being frozen, sawed apart, burned, or otherwise mutilated in various creative ways. Despite these torments they were weirdly resigned, even peaceful, their smooth brows free of woe or implants-paragons of yogism, unearthly fakirs.
I ran outside and threw up in the mud.
The doctor watched me from the curtain, and said, 'You know, your Mr. Cowper is depending on you. You're
