Shadow Puppets (The Shadow 3)

To: unready%[email protected]

Re: Good call

Good call. Not safe. Here's what. If there's something I should know because you can't act and I can, deaddrop it to my former cinc at a weblink that will come to you from IComeAnon. He'll know what to do with it. He isn't working for me any more for the same reason you're not helping. But he's still on our side--and, fyi, I'M still on our side, too.

Professor Anton had no laboratory and no library. There was no professional journal in his house, nothing to show he had ever been a scientist. Bean was not surprised. Back when the IDL was hunting down anyone doing research into altering the human genome, Anton was considered the most dangerous of men. He had been served with an order of inhibition, which meant that for many years he bore within his brain a device that, when he tried to concentrate on his area of study, he would have a panic attack. He had the strength, once, to hint to Sister Carlotta more than he should have about Bean's condition. But otherwise, he had been shut down in the prime of his career.

Now the order of inhibition had been lifted, but too late. His brain had been trained to avoid thinking deeply about his area of specialization. There was no going back for him.

"Not a problem," said Anton. "Science goes on without me. For instance, there's a new bacterium in my lung that undoes my cancer, bit by bit. I can't smoke any more, or the cancer grows faster than the bacteria can undo it. But I'm getting better, and they didn't have to take out my lungs to do it. Walk with me--I actually enjoy walking now."

They followed him through the garden to the front gate. In Brazil, the gardens were in the front of the house, so passersby could see over the front wall and the greenery and flowers could decorate the street. In Catalunya, as in Italy, the gardens were hidden away in a central courtyard, and the street got no gift but plaster walls and heavy wooden doors. Bean had not realized how much he had come to regard Ribeirao Preto as his home, but he missed it now, walking down the charming yet unrelentingly lifeless street.

Soon they reached the rambla, the broad central avenue that in all the coastal towns led down the slope of the city toward the sea. It was nearing noon, and the rambla was busy with people on errands. Anton pointed out shops and other buildings, telling them about the people who owned them or who worked there or lived there.

"I see you've become quite involved in the life of this city," said Petra.

"Superficially," said Anton. "An old Russian, long exiled in Romania, I'm a curiosity. They talk to me, but not about things that matter in their soul."

"So why not go back to Russia?" asked Bean.

"Ah, Russia. So many things about Russia. Just to remember them brings back the glorious days of my career, when I was gamboling about inside the nucleus of the human cell like a happy little lamb. But you see, those thoughts make me start to panic a little. So...I don't go where I get reminded."

"You're thinking about it now," said Bean.

"No, I'm saying words about it," said Anton. "And besides, if I didn't intend to think about it, I wouldn't have consented to see you."

"And yet," said Bean, "you seem unwilling to look at me."

"Ah, well," said Anton. "If I keep you in my peripheral vision, if I don't think about thinking about you...you are the one fruit that my tree of theory bore."

"There were more than a score of us," said Bean. "But the others were murdered."

"You survived," said Anton. "The others didn't. Why was that, do you think?"

"I hid in a toilet tank."

"Yes, yes," said Anton, "so I gleaned from Sister Carlotta, God rest her soul. But why did you, and you alone, sneak out of your bed and go into the bathroom and hide in such a dangerous and difficult place? Scarcely a year old, too. So precocious. So desperate to survive. Yet genetically identical to all your brothers, da?"

"Cloned," said Bean, "so...yes."

"It is not all genetics, is it?" said Anton. "It is not all anything. So much left to learn. And you are the only teacher."

"I don't know anything about that. I'm a soldier."

"It is your body that would teach us. And every cell inside it."

"Sorry, but I'm still using them," said Bean.

"As I'm still using my mind," said Anton, "even though it won't go where I most want it to take me."

Bean turned to Petra. "Is that why you brought me here? So Professor Anton could see what a big boy I've become?"

"No," said Petra.

"She brought you here," said Anton, "so I can persuade you that you are human."

Bean sighed, though what he wanted to do was walk away, get a cab to the airport, fly to another country, and be alone. Be away from Petra and her demands on him.