Gene Mapper (9 page)

“Do we really have to go that far?” I said. “They’re not using pesticides out there, no manure either. The site is Active Ground Cover certified. The soil purifies the air around the site. It’s probably cleaner than this room.”

Yagodo listened as he played with the model floating in front of him.

“No one knows what’s going on out there. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.” His eyes were shining like a child’s. “We know we’re dealing with a mutation, not a natural plant. I checked Thep out. It looks like she knows her stuff, so I wouldn’t bet on human error. Is there a bug in SR06 that triggered gene collapse? Also hard to believe. If it was gene collapse, we wouldn’t see natural plant DNA in the data. Then there’s the size of the intruder genome. Hopefully it’s mostly meaningless junk, but …”

Yagodo fell silent. He poked a finger into his little cloud and took out a small red point of light. I thought it might be a clue, but his eyes were looking past it into a great distance. His hands dropped to his lap and his mouth opened slowly. Whoever he was talking to now, it wasn’t us.

“Grasshoppers. Distilled site surrounded by DMZ. Can’t allow grasshoppers near the crop.”

DMZ: DEMILITARIZED ZONE
floated briefly in front of Yagodo. I couldn’t figure it out.

“Takashi, what’s ‘DMZ’? Is it a military term?”

“It’s kind of a strange area that surrounds the site,” said Kurokawa. “You’ll see when you get there. Isamu, you seem to know everything. I almost wish you could come with us. You’d be a great help. But that would slow down the salvaging.”

“Graft SR06 to the contaminant … no. Genetic distance from contaminant to MAFF standard genome. Start where? Niigata … no. Can’t assume it’s one of their cultivars. Three hundred million base pairs … A Fourier transform rainbow table might be faster … No, wait, maybe a superimposed deep search …”

“Um … sorry.” Nguyen looked apologetic. “When he gets like this, he can’t talk to anyone. I don’t think he’s going to be back for a while. You could wait, but why don’t we go downtown? We can drop by Kim’s shop. You might need to pick up some other things too.”

“In that case, why don’t you take Mamoru with you?” said Kurokawa. “I’ll stay here and wait for Isamu. I have to plan our trip, and when he gets back—” He glanced at Yagodo, who was manipulating his molecular model like a Rubik’s Cube—“I’ll have him take me to get that gear fitted.”

Just Nguyen and me, out and about in Ho Chi Minh City. Now that was an attractive plan.

“Going on a date?” Yagodo was still staring at his model. “Take the mobile stage. It should work fine through your phone. Use it as long as you like.”

So he was still with us after all.

“Leave your data here, Mamoru. I’ll look for matches on the Web.”

The breeze rippled the hem of Nguyen’s ao dai.

“I’m sorry about everything back there.” She dipped her head, embarrassed.

“No worries. It was fun, actually.”

We were in a little market area not far from the office. I was stocking up on things I’d forgotten to bring in the rush to get out of Tokyo. Nguyen was in fine form, forgetting to take the change for purchases, catching her hem on goods piled on tables and sending them scattering to the ground …

We walked along Pasteur Street to where it bisected a large, rectangular park. The lush lawns were dappled with trees. Food stands lined the central promenade. Locals and tourists reclined on the grass in the shade.

Walking next to Nguyen, the heat didn’t seem as oppressive as the day before. Maybe it was partly because we settled into a natural rhythm of walking from shade to shade and veering toward the doors of shops where the air conditioning flowed out onto the sidewalk, but the diaphanous flaps of her tunic and the hem of her sleeve fluttering as we walked along and brushing against my arm now and then might’ve also had something to do with it.

Like everyone in the park, we bought water at a drink stand and looked for a spot to sit. Nguyen used HMC to pay for my water. It was her compensation for Yagodo’s odd behavior. I have to say, HMC did look convenient.

Just as I’d seen coming in from the airport, there was a conspicuous number of people in wheelchairs passing in both directions along the promenade, and many others on crutches with missing limbs. Nguyen noticed me staring at this strange parade of the disabled. Her face darkened. “There are so many of them. It’s because of the herbicide the Americans used during the war.”

I’d heard about Agent Orange, but I didn’t realize it could still be a problem this long after the Vietnam War. Nguyen said that chemical residue from thousands of tons of defoliants dropped almost seventy years before was still leaching into the Saigon River, upstream from Ho Chi Minh City. The effects on people living near the river were actually getting worse.

“The company that manufactured that herbicide was famous for its GM crops too.”

She meant Monsanto, which had been a powerhouse in pesticides as well as genetically modified crops. The company had gone under when distilled crops became the world’s main source of food, since such crops required no pesticides at all. Now Monsanto was ancient history as far as the industry was concerned, but the people of Vietnam weren’t likely to ever forget it.

As she was talking, a small red dot started blinking in my field of vision. Red meant Priority. I opened my workspace in the palm of my hand and checked the message. I could have read it heads up, but superimposing a text message on Nguyen’s face would’ve been a waste of the scenery.

The message was from Kurokawa.

MAMORU: I’M SURE YOU MUST BE ENJOYING YOUR SHOPPING WITH NGUYEN. SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, BUT COULD YOU PICK UP THREE DOZEN BARS OF CHOCOLATE? SOMETHING WITH ABOUT FIVE HUNDRED CALORIES A BAR. I’M NOT CRAZY ABOUT NUTS. TAKASHI

Three dozen? Was he going to eat them all himself? Chocolate bars didn’t seem like a good way to break the ice with Mother Mekong’s team.

“What is it?”

Takashi wants me to get him some chocolate bars. Three
dozen
chocolate bars.”

“Wow, he must really like chocolate … Oh Mamoru, I just remembered. Could I leave you here for about half an hour? A friend of mine lives near here. I want to drop by. I’ll get Takashi’s chocolates on the way back.”

“Why don’t I just go with you?”

She paused. “No, that’s okay. You can wait for me in the cathedral.”

She pointed to a grove of trees on the other side of the park. A large red-brick building rose beyond the grove. I could see a row of latticework windows shaped like lotus petals set deep in the brick under a large white rosette filled in with stained glass. Two sharp white spires topped with tiny crosses thrust into the sky.

“That’s the cathedral? It looks impressive.”

Nguyen nodded happily and started telling me about Saigon Basilica—how it was modeled on Notre Dame de Paris, how it was a true example of Romanesque architecture, how the bricks were brought from Marseille and the stained glass made by local artisans under French guidance, and many other details she was enthusiastic about but not totally certain about either. Obviously it was a beloved landmark for the Vietnamese.

“In the visitor guidebook it says the name is Saigon Basilica, but in Vietnamese we call it the Basilica of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.”

“Is there an image of Mary?”

“Of course.” Nguyen pointed to a pathway through the grove. “Go through there and turn right. You’ll see the statue in front. Go up to it. From there you can see the whole building. It’s beautiful.”

“Isn’t the entrance under those windows?”

“That’s the side transept. Could you wait for me inside? It’s really nice. Cool too.”

“All right. See you.”

“I hate to do this to you. I’m supposed to be your guide. I’ll be right back.”

She got up and walked in the other direction, away from the church. I decided to follow her suggestion and get a look at the building from outside. As I stood up and took a swig of water, I got another message from Kurokawa.

POSTCRIPT: WE LEAVE TOMORROW. MEET ME IN THE LOBBY AT SIX. WE’RE STAYING ONE NIGHT. YOU WON’T NEED ANY CLOTHES FOR THE FIELD WORK. I JUST FOUND OUT WE’LL BE SUITING UP NAKED. TAKASHI.

Tomorrow. Again. Go ahead, jerk me around. And why did we have to get into our suits naked? What kind of gear were we using anyway? I hoped Cambodia would be more temperate than Vietnam.

*   *   *

Nguyen was right about the basilica. The bone-white bell towers stabbing into the empty blue made a lovely contrast with the red-brick façade. The towering yellow sunflowers in the noon light around the plaza added a touch of quiet mystery. On the other hand, the statue of Mary struck me as a bit roughly hewn. The eyes seemed too large.

Maybe it was because Nguyen was gone, or maybe because I’d been sitting in the shade too long, but under the noonday sun facing the huge basilica, it seemed as hot as the day we arrived. I hurried toward the entrance.

The doors stood open. As I passed through the arch, I noticed Chinese characters engraved in the stone. I couldn’t make out all the old-style characters, but I could see “basilica” and “holy mother.” Kurokawa was right. Vietnam was full of Chinese characters.

I passed through the vestibule and almost stumbled into a camera crew with piles of equipment. The crew was busy setting up a shot. A multipoint camera with an eight by eight flash array was flanked by huge mesh panels studded with more cameras. I didn’t have to look for the True Vision logo to recognize the equipment. This was a 3D RealVu shoot.

“Want a kick in the ass, moron? Move that light over there, now!”

A woman in sunglasses with a black bandanna on her head—the same woman who had called Takashi “kid” at the airport—was braying at a crewmember who was pushing one of the big flash arrays. Yagodo’s translation engine was rendering the voices of the crew into Japanese with such smoothness and naturalness, it was hard to believe it was coming through a portable stage. I wished it wasn’t translating the woman’s barking so vividly. I decided to get as far away from her as I could.

A detour around the knot of people and equipment took me farther into the nave. As I was looking for a place to sit, my call light started flashing. Kurokawa, I thought. I accepted automatically.

Shit
. As I was accepting, I realized the call was anonymous. An instant later, I was in Private Mode staring at an avatar I’d never seen before.

The man had straw-colored blond hair falling across his forehead, with eyes the blue of the sky outside. They drooped at the corners. He looked to be in his thirties, but the unnaturally deep lines around his mouth meant he was probably fifty or so and didn’t want to be seen as faking too much.

“Mamoru Hayashida? I am Enrico Conti. L&B.”

“Enrico? Is that really you?” This was the first time I’d “met” him. His appearance caught me off guard. Given his name, I wasn’t expecting someone so Nordic.

“Thank you for accepting my invitation. This is the first time to meet, no?” He extended his hand. The AR feedback supplied a sensation of resistance as I shook it.

“What’s going on, Enrico? Why did you invite me anonymously?”

“I apologize for that. There is something I have to tell you about the mutation at Mother Mekong. Can you give me a few minutes?”

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the pews behind him. The people in the church were now gray, featureless avatars, moving like phantoms in a dream.

“May I ask you, Mamoru? How far have you gotten with your investigation?”

“Not far. I heard you went AWOL from L&B. Are you in some kind of trouble?”

Enrico’s avatar made his expression hard to read, but he sounded confident and determined.

“Don’t worry about me. I could not be part of L&B’s response to this problem. Listen, we are going to get pretty tired if we stand here talking. Shall we sit?”

He turned and walked toward the altar where there were fewer people and sat sideways in one of the pews with his legs stretched out in the aisle. I sat in the pew behind him. The bench was too shallow. My knees almost touched the seat in front of me. The wood was hard under my back and buttocks.

If you stand for too long in Private Mode, the feedback tends to leave you with an ache in your knees. On the other hand, I had a feeling this bench was going to do me in anyway if we sat here long enough. I had to fidget constantly to keep the blood flowing. Enrico leaned sideways against the back of the pew, his arm stretched out along the top.

“I left because I have given up on Lintz,” he whispered. “I was the Mother Mekong PM only in name. Lintz gave me hardly any control. This was a project that wanted a firm hand keeping all vendors and subcontractors in line. But when the news from Mother Mekong comes to us, what does he do? He gives everything to Kurokawa, and I am sitting there doing nothing.”

I wondered whether Enrico had called me just to whine. “I heard L&B’s team has its hands full dealing with customers and the government.”

His expression seemed to harden for a moment, then a corner of his mouth lifted in a smile.

“Yes, there is a lot of that, but it is up to Barnhard and the sales guys to handle. They are the ones who wanted to do this. Is it my job to go around apologizing to everybody?”

I couldn’t figure Enrico out. Was this why he dropped out of sight?

“Lintz makes everyone busy with silly administrative tasks. And then he gives the investigation—the only thing that matters—to a freelancer! Listen to me, Mamoru. I am sure you are a good specialist. The problem is that Lintz chose Kurokawa.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Indeed, it is. Lintz is completely blind, you see. The real Kurokawa hates genetic engineering.”

This was a new one on me and not believable at all. I’d worked with Takashi for three years, and his commitment to the job always came across loud and clear. Okay, so Enrico lost out in the corporate game. He would have to blame it on someone.

“I would not be surprised, even, if Kurokawa is behind this mutation. He had control of all the data and the specifications, everything going to the subcontractors. If he wanted to put in some malware along the way without L&B noticing, it was easy for him to do. Or just mess up the genome itself.”

“Enrico, you’re out of line. I was the last one to touch that blueprint, and it went directly from me to L&B. You approved it yourself.”

His face hardened again. Now I knew what it was: an artifact. His avatar was covering his reaction. Maybe an expletive? We’d just met, but I was already starting to dislike him.

“Yes, that is true. It is a detail, okay? I am talking about Kurokawa. You met him in person. Don’t you think there is something unnatural about his size?” Enrico gripped the back of the bench and brought his face closer. “He is a mutation himself. Distilled crop technology did that. And Lintz was involved.”

He took a video file from his shirt pocket. “You are a gene mapper. All you can touch is the style sheet, so I am not surprised if you don’t know that fourteen—no, fifteen years ago, L&B’s first distilled rice caused genetic damage in the families of the people who ate it. Kurokawa is one of them. Take a look at this. It is from 2016.”

He held the file out and pushed the play button with a long forefinger. I peered closer at the screen in the palm of his hand.

“Give me back my son!” The man in the video was Kurokawa, shouting in the voice I knew so well. Did he have a child?

He was sitting at a table before a clutch of microphones, glaring at someone out of the frame to his left. It was footage from a Japanese news show. I saw the same thick black-frame glasses, the same hairstyle, the same dark blue suit. But he looked like a mess—hair all over the place, dirty shirt, his suit shiny with wear around the sleeves. It looked like he hadn’t had a bath in weeks. I’d never seen him so agitated.

The caption along the bottom read:
ARE YOU AT RISK? SUPER RICE ZERO CAUSES GENE MUTATION!

A woman wearing a gray suit sat next to Kurokawa, gazing at him with concern. She looked like she might be his lawyer. But what was Kurokawa doing on a news program fifteen years ago?

“How dare you call it Super Rice? Why did you make something like that? Bring back Takashi! Give me back my son!”

Kurokawa looked like he was going to leap over the table. The woman gently restrained him. Enrico’s finger overlapped the screen and touched the pause button.

“That is Kurokawa’s father. It is strange, isn’t it? How much they look alike. The video is genuine. It is from L&B’s own archives. I will give you a bookmark. You can verify the date for yourself.”

When I looked up, Enrico was standing between the pews, holding out a widget shaped like a bookmark.

“Okay, Enrico. I get that Takashi looks just like his father. What I don’t get is, why are you showing me this?” I snatched the bookmark away and shoved it in my pocket irritably. Yagodo could confirm whether it was fake or not. I assumed that not all of it was, but Enrico had a prime motivation to enhance it since his job had been taken away.