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  The fish boy grabbed Lewis’ arm. “Do something, man,” he said. “It ain’t right.” Lewis remembered that the fish boy’s name was something crazy, like an old-time rock star. Elton. Or Elvis.

  Lewis shook his head. With a hard look on his face, Karl Hehle stepped in and shoved the fish boy aside. The others stepped back, unwilling to confront the guard.

  As Lewis climbed in the truck, he looked over the group of freaks. “You all take care now,” he said, his voice sounding childish and sanctimonious, as if he had been back in church choir. “It’s all over.”

  The fish boy’s weird eyes were full of impotent pain and rage. Lewis wondered if maybe that was how his great-grandfather had looked when they told him he never had owned his farm and called him a “squatter.”

  The driver squirted Ozium into the truck as they left. It did nothing for the stink, just adding a sharp odor of chemical disinfectant to the stench of burnt meat. Lewis gagged, remembering the fish boy and the others. He had no idea what it would feel like, seeing your friend break and run toward a high-voltage fence. Seeing him fry, jumping around like a six-inch trout on a hot iron griddle.

  Lewis knew about trout and griddles. Back in his locker, Lewis had the card of a man he’d met fishing a couple of Sundays before at Lake Nacimiento. Lewis went out early most weekends. He hardly ever saw anyone until he’d been out a couple of hours, but this man had been out on the lake one morning, with his line in the water, sipping hot coffee. They’d got to talking. Lewis had shared the man’s thermos of coffee, and he had taken the man’s card. His name was Frank Curtez and he said that he was a DA in San Luis. He had been interested in what went on at Camp Roberts. Said he’d heard some stories.

  Lewis had almost thrown the card away. But maybe just from laziness, he’d thrown it in his locker. He covered his mouth and nose with his hand to stop the burnt odor. The man who said you’d get used to that kind of stink didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Maybe he’d go fishing again on Sunday, out in that clean lake air. Maybe he’d call Frank Curtez. God knew he couldn’t stand by and watch another man rack himself up on that fence without doing something.

  The body of Tommy Lee Tucker slipped from the stretcher as Lewis and the driver wheeled it up the steep ramp of the morgue. The other paramedics weren’t very careful about picking him up, and they let his burnt head slam against the cold cement.

  Tommy Lee Tucker’s eyeballs had been cooked way back to the nerve and that makes changes in the flesh, no matter whether you were a freak or as tall, straight-limbed and normal as Lewis Starr. The eyeball slipped out of its socket and flopped wetly against Tommy Lee Tucker’s temple.

  The driver started laughing. “Anybody for a couple holes of golf?” Everyone chuckled nervously except Lewis. An eyeball isn’t much smaller than a golf ball. It looks a lot bigger than most people think, once it’s out of someone’s head.

  Lewis Starr always followed procedure and unlike two of the others, he still wore his rubber gloves. Very gently, Lewis pushed Tommy Lee Tucker’s eye back into place. He couldn’t shut the pig man’s eyes, but he drew the sheet up over his swollen face. None of the paramedics laughed.

  The pig man’s cooked egg white eyes haunted Lewis Starr that night. He had to call that man, Frank Curtez, because if he didn’t, he knew that those opaque blind eyes would haunt him forever.

  Chapter Four

  Five minutes after Julie and Harmon returned from their visit with the Prinns, Harmon burst into the office of his other assistant, Dick. The imago.

  “I told Julie everything,” he said, lying.

  The slope-shouldered figure in the old-fashioned charcoal serge suit who stood at the window did not turn. The only evidence that he had noticed Harmon’s entry was a slight stiffening of his narrow shoulders. Harmon fought back a surge of irritation and kept a pleasant tone in his voice by forcing a smile, a trick he’d used for years. Why couldn’t you choose your family, he wondered. Why couldn’t he have had... Dick... for a dad?

  “Are you sleeping? Come on, snap out of it!”

  “I would like to speak with her first,” the figure at the window said. His hands clasped and unclasped behind his back.

  “You make me want to give you some marbles or rocks every time you do that,” Harmon said, meaning the hand-clasping.

  “You could try,” Dick replied. Harmon knew that the rocks and marbles would fall through the virtual fingers as they moved nervously against his palms. Dick still did not turn.

  “Listen,” Harmon said. “Things are shaping up. Camp Roberts is perfect. Why, they’re as happy as —” Harmon stopped himself, for he had nearly said “pigs in a poke.”

  “They’re happy,” he said, after a moment.

  “How can you know that?” Dick asked.

  Harmon slapped his forehead. “God, I keep forgetting. Points of reference. They’re hooked up to biofeedback machines. More sophisticated than what you’d remember, of course. They’re loving it. Absolutely crazy about the programs. Happy, happy.”

  “You can’t just warehouse them,” Dick said. “You’ve got to have rehabilitation. They can contribute. And I still have some memory — you said just yesterday that there’s no progress toward a cure,” Dick said, and then he turned, his face downcast. Suddenly, his mournful, jowly face broke into a crooked grin, but his eyes were not smiling at all. Harmon had never gotten used to that, not even in all the time he had worked with his special assistant: the most special of all of the imagoes, his virtual constructs. Harmon’s triumph, his vision made real. His advisor and his inspiration. The greatest man of the twentieth century, brought back, somewhat edited, to serve in the next.

  “Oh, there will be one, friend,” Harmon said, wanting powerfully to take the other man’s hand, though he knew he could not. His hand would pass right through the imago with a vague buzzing sensation, like bees or tiny electric charges. Dick Nixon was no more solid than a ghost. He looked like he was considering saying something, but he remained silent.

  Now, if they could engineer an actual touch between an imago and a human being, that would be something. An imago that could be touched might lead to a real change and a deeper understanding of the virus, of how bodies were created, ruined, and fixed. But Harmon didn’t want to think about that, not now. All he could think of was Julie, with her wonderful combination of innocence and intelligence, and her rock-solid morality. That had been what had attracted Harmon at first. It was amazing, that she should grow to that age, in this place and time, and possess that kind of character. It was all due to blindness, he knew; she just didn’t know. But she was unspoiled, as he had never been. Lovely Julie, with the same name and the same dark hair as Dick’s own daughter, which made the whole thing seem inevitable.

  “Dick, she’s with me,” Harmon blurted. “It’s finally happened,” he added, realizing how boyish he sounded, but not really caring. He couldn’t tell Dick about the gloves, of course, that was Harmon’s special secret, but he could share the emotion, perhaps; that incredible thrill which was coursing through his every nerve. “I want to shake your —”

  Dick Nixon nodded. “Didn’t you tell me she was married?” he said quietly. “Maybe you should get some rest. You look like shit, son. Did I ever tell you how much you resemble Bob Haldeman? You could take a lesson from him. That man always took care of himself.”

  “Right,” Harmon said, though he looked about as much like Bob Haldeman as he looked like Ronald McDonald, except that he perhaps shared Haldeman’s wiry, toned physique.

  “I’m glad you say you’re off to a good start with her.” There was an expression in Nixon’s eyes which Harmon couldn’t read. Maybe it was a vagueness caused by some lack of memory deep within the DisLex brain where the core of Nixon lived. Harmon knew those eyes so well, and he almost always knew when Nixon was lying, because, while Dick Nixon had been the king of the liars during his day, Harmon knew that he was far more expert in dissimulation. It was an internal thing. You h
ad to believe the lie. And Nixon’s self-doubt was always so palpable, showing on his mismatched face.

  That was why Dick was the perfect assistant. Harmon knew that he needed a little caution and a dose of paranoia, to balance his occasional tendency toward overconfidence, as well as Nixon’s encyclopedic knowledge of the political and human animal. Dick Nixon had learned some hard and deep lessons. He had suffered. It was all well now, though, Harmon thought. All very well. Let the President suffer for the greater good.

  “I couldn’t have done any of it without you,” Harmon said to Dick, though it was nothing but flattery, and Nixon knew it, Harmon could tell by the bitter smile which had come over his jowly face.

  “Go have a drink, son,” Nixon said, grinning. “And stop making such a damn fool out of yourself.”

  “All right,” Harmon said. “Just wanted to let you know.”

  Nixon nodded, turning back to the window, staring over Sunnyvale’s streets, office towers, and subdivisions, toward the distant hills.

  Harmon left, savoring the thought of a celebratory drink. God, she was his. The first lesson finished, and the first trip taken. She was with him. In more ways than anyone could yet know, save Harmon himself. He stepped lightly back to his office, and rang Martha for a bottle of Glenlivet, a bucket of ice, and his favorite six-sided Irish crystal glass, which Nixon had once sipped from at San Clemente, and as closely as Harmon could determine, had also been used in the Oval Office itself on those long, lonely nights when Dick Nixon had endured his greatest trials.

  And in Harmon’s secret heart, he believed that the way in which Nixon had resigned had been his greatest triumph as well, though it had been a Pyrrhic victory. Dick had gone out like a man, head held high, arms raised, flashing twin victory symbols. He hadn’t given in, and he’d never really apologized. The thing was, weak-minded hypocrites might condemn you for a lot of things, as they had condemned Richard Nixon, but as long as you knew that what you were doing was right, none of that mattered.

  And Harmon knew that he was right, as he sipped the single-malt scotch, savoring its complex and bitter taste.

  Chapter Five

  It was after eight. The risotto and broiled salmon Julie had prepared lay congealed on Frank’s plate. Julie had already forked her dinner into the recycler. It was not the best salmon and the trawler-deck odor of the fish made her retch.

  On the 5:55 home, her hands had trembled like the hands of an old woman. When she’d looked up from her datapad at a man who was coughing like a basset hound, she’d accidentally dumped half of her luke-warm paper cup of cappuccino on her brand-new fawn-colored merino skirt. Now, it was wadded in the back of the closet. In search of comfort clothes, she’d found Frank’s roomy gray sweatpants and tucked her ivory silk blouse carelessly into them. Then, she had poured herself a glass of biting, resinous chablis and sat by the sliding glass door which opened onto their redwood deck, facing the east wall of the canyon. In the morning, it was a peaceful view. Most of the time at night, it was nothing but a sheet of velvety black and that moment, black suited her.

  She could not get past the insistent, clear voice inside of her, a voice which sounded a great deal like her Tia Rita, which said, over and over, that Harmon Jacques was broken somewhere inside, and that she was in the most terrible trouble. Why had she taken off her gloves? Why had she let him kiss her hand?

  It was better to look out at the canyon wall than across the living room to her plant nook. Sometimes, she took good care of the plants, but now, the nook was a graveyard. Julie didn’t have a green thumb, like Tia Rita. Frank said that she had “the black thumb of death.” Creeping Charlie in his round Tijuana terra cotta pot had become limp, moribund Charlie. The scalloped leaves were a shade somewhere between Gulden’s Spicy Mustard yellow and a sickly apple green. The leaves reminded her of a candy she’d begged for as a child, a bright green artificial apple lollipop coated in sticky sweet caramel. When Tia Rita had finally given her two quarters for the sucker, Julie hadn’t been able to finish it. The caramel was too sweet; the hard apple candy bitter as alum.

  It began to rain outside in the canyon. Frank came in, shaking off his raincoat.

  Julie sipped the chablis that had warmed in her hand and greeted him with a noise that might have been “hi” or might have been “huh.”

  “Long day?” Frank found his dinner and put it in the microwave. He started to talk while he pushed the buttons and the machine beeped. “I think we’ve got a handle on the Cavuto case. I deposed one of the workers.” The Cavuto case was about dope and fraud. Cavuto ran trucks back and forth from Soledad and work camps and Frank’s office was investigating drug rumors. Maybe labor abuses. Julie couldn’t remember whether or not Frank had said anything about Camp Roberts. He might have said, but the name had meant nothing to her until Harmon Jacques’ had spoken of it that afternoon.

  “That’s why you’re late,” Julie said. She took a gulp of the wine, shuddering as it went down. The flesh on her chest puckered into goosepimples. The temperature had dropped ten degrees since she’d been sitting by the sliding glass door.

  Frank leaned against the refrigerator, crossing his arms. Would he notice? She counted silently down from ten. Seven years of marriage and his cue to notice her mood stayed steadily at three.

  When she got to three, he said, “you had a bad day.”

  She nodded. The tears were going to come now. She put the glass of chablis on Frank’s little magazine table, atop a California Jurist from last summer, and held out her arms.

  Frank’s hair was damp and cold from the rain but his cheek was warm as he embraced her. She held him tight, feeling the strong muscles knotted at the base of his neck, layered over his shoulder blades. Later, she would give him a massage. His muscles turned to stone, especially on these late nights. She buried her head between his neck and shoulder. She was top-level DisLex, and had of course adhered to the non-disclosure agreement for years. Even with Frank. They had both grown accustomed to not talking. And... she couldn’t tell him about the glove. He would never allow her to go back after that. Frank had always disliked her career, though he was far too gentle to ever say so or pressure her. Much. No. It would just enrage him. And all she wanted right now was comfort. Just plain comfort. So, she whispered only, “it was tough.”

  “You’ll make it,” he said. “You’re strong, girl.”

  She nodded and let herself cry it out.

  “So, the big man’s a hardass,” Frank said after Julie had finished. Frank’s nice pinstriped shirt was damp from neck to shoulder and down the chest. Soon it would be in the closet, wadded next to her spoiled merino skirt and the rest of the cleaning. Neither of them had time to take the cleaning into town; a Saturday chore for once a month, if they could make it. At least tears would come out more easily than sugary cappuccino.

  Frank dressed like a god and that was one of the little reasons Julie loved him. Even when he was just starting out, clerking for the place they called the Firm of Sleaze in San Bernardino, he’d dressed better than any of the partners. The Firm of Sleaze partners drove racing green or midnight blue Jaguars with birdseye maple dashboards and gold-plated appointments. Even when he was clerking, Frank had looked like he should have driven a car like that. Julie knew that Frank wasn’t happy that she’d cried on one of his best shirts, and also that she was wearing his favorite sweatpants, but he said nothing about any of that, and that was an even bigger reason why she loved him.

  “He’s not a hardass,” she said, standing and going to the window. Frank came behind her and slipped his arm around her waist. She knew immediately that he wanted her. She had cried and he had comforted her; of course now he wanted her. She sighed as he brushed her hair from her neck and began to kiss her skin, very gently.

  At that moment, Julie saw the strangest thing on the black canyon wall. Two tiny red flickers, like the eyes of a cat in the dark. “What’s that?” she asked. Frank continued to kiss her neck. She wiggled away and pointed at
the glowing spots.

  “I’m serious, Frank. That wasn’t there before. Is it a fire?” Even though it had begun to rain, it wasn’t raining very hard. A fire could spread down to them in an instant.

  Frank saw the red lights now, and nodded. “It’s a fire,” he said. “Homeless. Mutants. Didn’t you know they were there?”

  Julie backed from the window, chilled again. She didn’t like the thought of them out there like that, so close to the house. It was not a mile away, maybe half a mile. God, how much more could happen in one day?

  Frank shook his head, laughing. “Sometimes I think you live in one of your DisLex fantasy worlds. Don’t you know there are hundreds of thousands of people like this, maybe more than a million? How are they supposed to get a job? Proposition 66, Julie. When they cut off the payments, they hit the streets.”

  Harmon had a solution, Julie thought: Camp Roberts. She watched the flickering fires. Two spots, which meant at least two people, probably twisted and horrible to look at. Like the ones at Camp Roberts. Like the pig man, Tommy Lee Tucker, with a snout and sharp teeth. He was a good man, that little girl had said. Little Tina Prinn. A cute little girl, and she said she was no longer afraid of the freaks.

  “What are they doing out there?” A little dark-haired girl, not afraid — how could Julie feel such fear, and such loathing?

  Frank shrugged. The microwave had been beeping for a long time. Frank muttered something about getting his dinner as he left the window and retrieved his plate. “Damn, that’s hot,” he said, dropping the plate to the counter, then putting his fingers in his mouth.

  As he ran his fingers under the cold tap, he called to Julie from the kitchen. “Those guys out there probably ate cold beans out of a can for dinner and now they’re sitting cozy by their camp fires. Like the Three Caballeros.”