couples have children-what is this, Miriam? If it's another of your money-laundering leads, it looks like a dead end.'
'It's not a money-laundering lead. I think it really is a fertility clinic.' The drinks arrived and Miriam paused to take a tablet and wash it down with freshly squeezed orange juice. 'It's something else I ran across, okay?'
Paulette glanced away.
'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap. Been having a shitty time lately.'
'You have?' Paulette shook her head, then looked back at Miriam. 'Things haven't been so rosy here, either.'
'Oh no. You go first, okay?'
'Nah, it's nothing. Man trouble, no real direction. You've heard it all before.' Paulie backed off and Miriam eyed her suspiciously.
'You're tap-dancing around on account of Roland, aren't you? Well, there's no need to do that. I've-I've gotten used to it.' Miriam glanced down as the waitress slid a platter of bruschetta onto the table in front of her. 'It doesn't get any better, but it gets easier to deal with the, with the…' She gave up and picked up a piece of the bread, nibbling on it to conceal her sudden spasm of depression.
Paulette stared at her. 'So call me an insensitive cow, but what else is eating you?' she asked.
'It's'-Miriam waved a hand, her mouth full-'reproductive politics. You'd think they'd figure I'm too old for it but no, you're never too old for the Clan to start looking for something to do with your ovaries. Fallout from the civil war they had a few decades ago: they don't have enough world-walkers, so the pressure is on those they do have to breed like a bunny. But I didn't have the story completely straight before. You know all the stuff about arranged marriages I told you? I should have asked who did the arranging. It turns out to be the old ladies, everyone's grandmother. There's a lot of status tied up in it, and it seems I got a whole bunch of folks ticked off at me just because I exist. To make matters worse, Ma's turned strange on me-she's gone native, even seems to be playing along with the whole business. I think she's being blackmailed, crudely, over her medication. The king, his mother's part of the Clan, he's trying to set up the younger son, who is a basket case into the bargain-brain damage at an early age-and he's got me in his sights. And the elder son seems to have decided to hate me for some reason. Don't know if it's connected, but there's more.' Miriam took another mouthful of orange juice before she could continue.
'I ran across this secret memo, from the director of the Gerstein Center to Angbard, of all people, talking about the results of some project that Applied Genomics is funding. And I smell a rat. A great, big, dead-and- decomposing-under-the-front-stoop, reproductive politics rodent. Angbard is paying for in-vitro fertilization treatments. Meanwhile everybody keeps yammering about how few world-walkers there are and how it's every woman's duty to spawn like a rabbit, and then there's this stuff about looking for W-star heterozygotes. Carriers for some kind of gene, in other words. And I just learned of a genetic test that's become available in the past year, god knows from where, that can tell if someone's a carrier or an active world-walker. You fill in the dotted lines, Paulie- you tell me I'm not imagining things, okay?' Miriam realized her voice had risen, and she looked around hastily, but the restaurant was busy and the background racket was loud enough to cover her.
Paulette stared at her, clutching her bread knife in one fist as if it were the emergency inflation toggle on a life jacket. 'I've never heard such a…!' She put the knife down, very carefully. 'You're serious.'
'Oh yes.' Miriam took another bite of bruschetta. It tasted of cardboard, despite the olive oil and chopped tomato. 'What would be the point of being flippant?'
Paulette picked up her bruschetta and nibbled at it. 'That is so monumentally paranoid that I don't know where to begin. You think Angbard is paying for IVF for these families and using donors from the Clan.' She thought for a minute. 'It wouldn't work, would it? They wouldn't be world-walkers?'
'Not as I understand it, no.' Miriam finished her starter. The din and clatter of the restaurant was making her headache worse. 'But they'd have a huge pool of, in effect, outer family members. Half of them female. Thousands, adding many hundreds more every year. Suppose-how long has this been going on for? How long has HRAF been going?'
'I don't know.' Paulette looked uncomfortable. 'Sixteen years?'
'Okay. Suppose. Imagine HRAF is about creating a pool of outer family people living in the United States who don't know what they are. In, say, another five years they start hitting age twenty-one. Six hundred… call it three hundred women a year. HRAF have their details. They send them all letters asking if they're willing to accept money to be surrogate mothers. What does a surrogate cost-ten, twenty thousand bucks? Maybe nine out of ten will say no, but that leaves thirty women, each of whom can provide a new world-walker every year-or walkers, you're not going to tell me that the Gerstein Center isn't going to dose them with clomiphene, to try for twins or triplets. Call it fifty new world-walkers per year. Say half of the surrogate mothers agree to continue for four years, and you've got, let's see, a hundred and twenty five new world-walkers per annual cohort from Angbard's breeding program. Paulie, there are only about a thousand world-walkers in the Clan! In just eight years, half the world-walkers will come from this scheme-in twenty years, they'll outnumber the Clan's native-born world-walkers, even if the average Clan female produces four world-walking children.' She drank the rest of her orange juice.
'It's like that movie, The Boys from Brazil,' Paulie murmured. 'Cloning up an army of bad guys and making sure they're raised loyal to the cause.' She looked uncomfortable. 'Miriam, I met Angbard. He isn't the type to do that.'
'Um. No.' Miriam stared at her plate. All of a sudden she didn't feel hungry. 'Charming, ruthless, and manipulative, I'll grant you. Liable to back a conspiracy to create a test-tube master race? I'm-I don't see it either. Except, I saw that memo! With my own eyes! If it's real, it looks like there's something really smelly going on at that clinic. And I need to get a handle on it.'
'Why?' Paulette asked pointedly. She stabbed at her bruschetta with a knife. 'What is getting into you, Miriam? What have they got on you?'
'They-' She stared. 'Blackmail is business as usual,' she said bitterly. 'I figure I need to get an edge of my own, before they marry me off to the Idiot. Simple as that.'
'Huh.' Paulette put her knife down with exaggerated care. 'Miriam. I told you about what things were like when I was growing up.'
'Yes.' Miriam nodded. 'Goodfellas. Well, I was born into the mob, I guess, so using their own tactics-blackmail seems to be the family sport-'
'Miriam!' Paulette reached across the table and took her hand. 'Listen. As your agent, and as your legal adviser, I would really be a lot happier if you would drop this. You're right, the clinic shit sounds dirty. But if your uncle is involved, it means money. The tough guys, they used to cut their wives and children a lot of slack-as long as they didn't try to nose in on the business. You see what I'm saying? This is family business and they're going to take it a whole lot differently if you go digging-'
'Nuh-uh, no way.' Miriam shook her head vehemently. 'I know them, Paulie. They're more medieval than that. Everything is on the outside, you know? Their politics is entirely personal. So's their business. If I get the goods on this scheme, then I've got a handle on whoever's running it-' Miriam stopped dead as the waitress sashayed in and scooped up her plate with a smile.
'I still don't like it.' Paulette frowned. 'I mean that. I think you're misreading them. Just because you're little miss heiress, it doesn't make you exempt. They've got their code: item number two on it, after 'don't talk to the cops,' is 'don't stick your nose where it doesn't belong.' And this sounds like exactly the sort of business people wake up dead for sticking their nose into.'
Miriam shrugged. 'Paulie, I've got status among them. I couldn't just vanish. Too many people would ask questions.'
'Like they did when you appeared out of nowhere?' Paulette stared at her cynically. 'Miriam. Seriously, one last time, I've got a bad feeling about this. Please, just for me, will you drop it?'
Miriam crossed her arms, irritated. 'Who's paying your wages?'
The main course appeared, savory meatballs in a hot, sweet tomato sauce. Paulie nodded, her face frozen. 'Okay, if that's how you want to do it,' she said quietly. 'You're the boss, you know best. Okay?'
'Oh… okay.' I went too far, Miriam realized. Shit. How do I apologize for that? She glanced down at her plate. 'Yeah, that's how I want to play it,' she said. Play it all the way, then apologize. Paulie was a mensch, she'd come round.
'First I have to figure out if it really is what it seems to be. Although given that stuff about W-star
