Precisely half an hour later, the machine emitted a strangled squawking noise and switched itself off.
'Bother.' Miriam squeezed the power button without success, then stuck the stylus in the reset hole. Beep. The machine switched on again. Miriam breathed a sigh of relief, then tried to open the file she'd been working on. It wasn't there. A couple minutes of feverish poking proved that the machine had reset itself to factory condition, erasing not only the work she'd already done but all the other files she'd been meaning to read and edit. Miriam stared at it in dismay. 'Fifteen hours?' she complained to the empty seat opposite: she hadn't even brought a newspaper. For a moment she was so angry she actually considered throwing the machine out the window. 'Fucking computers.' She glanced over her shoulder guiltily, but she was alone. Alone with nothing but the parched New Britain countryside rolling past, a faint smoke trail off to one side hinting at the arid wind that seemed to be plaguing the seaboard this summer.
If Miriam had one overwhelming personality flaw it was that she couldn't abide inactivity. After ten minutes of tapping her right toe on the floor she found herself nodding along, trying to make up a syncopated backbeat that followed the rhythm of the wheels as they clattered over the track joints. Not even a book, she thought. For a while she thought about leaving her compartment in search of the conductor, but it would look odd, wouldn't it? Single woman traveling alone, no reading matter: that was the sort of funny-peculiar thing that the Homeland Security Directorate might be interested in. The idea of writing on her PDA had lost all its residual charm, in the absence of any guarantee that the faulty device wouldn't consign long hours of work to an electronic limbo. But not doing anything went right against the grain. Worse, it was an invitation to daydream. And when she caught herself daydreaming these days, it tended to be about people she knew. Roland loomed heartbreakingly large in her thoughts. I'll go out of my mind if I don't do something, she realized. And almost without her willing it, her eyes turned upward to gaze at the carpetbag. It can't do any harm to look. Can it?
COMPANY CONFIDENTIAL
From:
Director's office,
Gerstein Center for Reproductive Medicine,
Stony Brook
To:
Angbard Lofstrom,
Director,
Applied Genomics Corporation
Here's a summary of the figures for this FY. A detailed breakdown follows this synopsis; I look forward to hearing from you in due course.
Operations continued as scheduled this quarter. I can report that our projected figures are on course to make the Q2 targets in all areas. Demand for ART procedures including IVF, IUI, ICSI, and tubal reversal is up 2% over the same quarter last year, with an aggregate total of 672 clients treated in the Q1 period. Last year's Q2 figures indicate a viable outcome in 598 cases with a total of 661 neonates being delivered.
With reference to AGC subsidized operations, a total of 131 patients were admitted to the program during Q1. A preliminary estimate is that the total cost of subsidized treatment for these individuals during this quarter will incur operation expenses of approximately $397K (detailed breakdown to follow with general quarterly accounts). Confidence-based extrapolation from last year's Q2 crop is that this will result in roughly 125 +/-17 neonates coming to term in next year's Q1 period. Of last year's Q2 crop, PGD and chorionic villus sampling leads me to expect an 87% yield of viable W* heterozygotes.
We were extremely startled when routine screening revealed that one of our patients was a W* heterozygous carrier. As this patient was not an applicant for the AGC program, no follow-on issues arise in this case, although I have taken the liberty of redacting their contact details from all patient-monitoring systems accessible to FDA supervision-copy available on your request. However, I must urgently request policy guidance in dealing with future W*hz clients not referred to the program through your office.
Other than that, it's all business as usual at GCRM! Hope you're having a profitable and successful quarter, and feel free to contact me if you require further supplementary information or a face-to-face inspection of our facility.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Andrew Darling, D.O.
Director of Obstetrics
Cops
A lot had happened in twelve weeks. The assorted federal agents who had been sucked into the retreat in Maryland had acquired a name, a chain of command, a mission statement, and a split personality. In fact it was, thought Mike, a classic example of interdepartmental politics gone wrong, or of the blind men and the elephant, or something. Everyone had an idea about how they ought to work on this situation, and most of the ideas were incompatible.
'It's not just Smith,' Pete complained from the other side of his uncluttered desk. 'I am getting the runaround from everyone. Judith says she's not allowed to use agency resources to cross-fund my research request without a directive from the Department of Justice-she's ass-covering-Frank says the County Surveyor's Office isn't allowed to release the information without a FOIA, and Smith says he wants to help but he's not allowed to because the regs say that data flows into the NSA, never out.'
Days of running around offices trying to get a consensus together were clearly taking their toll on Pete Garfinkle. Mike nodded wearily. 'Have you tried public sources?'
'What? Architecture Web sites? Property developers' annual reports, that kind of thing? I could do that, but it'd take me weeks, and there's no guarantee I'd spot everything.' Pete's shoulders were set, tense with frustration. 'We're cops, not intelligence analysts, Mike, isn't that right? I mean, except for you, babysitting source Greensleeves. So we sit here with our thumbs up our asses while the big bad spooks run around pulling their National Security cards on everybody. I can't even requisition a goddamned report on underground parking garages in New Jersey that've been fitted with new security doors in the past six months! And this is supposed to be a goddamned joint intelligence task force?'
'Chill out.' It came out more sharply than Mike had intended. 'You've got me doing it too, now. Listen, let's go find a Starbucks and unwind, okay?'
'But that means-' Pete rolled his eyes.
'Yeah, I know, it means checking out of the motel. So what? It's nearly lunchtime. We've almost certainly got time to sign out before we have to sign back in again. Come on.'
Mike and Pete cleared their cramped two-man office. It wasn't a simple process: nothing was simple, once you got the FBI and the NSA and the CIA and the DEA all trying to come up with common security standards. First, everything they were reading went into locked desk drawers. Then all the stationary supplies went into another lockable drawer. Then Mike and Pete had to cross-check each others' locked drawers before they could step outside into the corridor, lock the office door, and head for the security station by the elevator bank. FTO-the Family Trade Organization-was big on compartmentalization, big on locks, big on security-big on just about everything except internal cooperation. And big on the upper floors of skyscrapers, where prices were depressed by the post-9/11 hangover and world-walker assassins were considered a greater threat than hijacked jets.
The corridor outside was a blank stretch punctuated by locked doors, some with red lights glowing above them, the walls bare except for security-awareness posters from some weird NSA loose-lips-sink-ships propaganda committee. Mike made sure to lock his door (blue key) and spun the combination dial before he headed toward the elevator bank. The last door on the corridor was ajar. 'Bill?' asked Pete.
'Pete. And Mike.' Bill Swann smiled. 'Got something for me?'
