Chapter 8

Later, I calculated that I had slept a solid fourteen hours. The nanomites had to have done something to keep me out that long, but when I awoke, it was morning and a low voice was repeating in my ear,

“Yeah, yeah.” I buried my face in the pillow, but the chant continued unabated. My pillow should have blocked out the voice, but it seemed to amplify the whispers.

“Oh, shut up, will you?” I flipped the covers back and rolled over, planted my feet on the floor and stood up, looking around for the extension cord.

I missed stepping in yesterday’s congealed vomit by millimeters. With more strength than I would have believed I possessed, I sidestepped the ick, made it to the nearest switch plate, slapped my hand onto it, and let the nanomites feed. As they swarmed down my arm and into the power supply, the usual warmth flowed up my arm and through me—and it felt kind of different this time. More energizing. Revitalizing.

While they fed, I inhaled deep, satisfying breaths and stretched my legs, my back, my neck.

Then I hit the bathroom. A quick once-over with my hands left me disgusted. Dried, crusted blood smeared my face, neck, hair, and nightshirt.

After I’d relieved myself, I showered, washed my hair, and put on clean clothes. I set my bloody nightshirt and pillowcase to soak in cold water. I didn’t know what I’d do about the blood stains on the pillow itself. Then I went to the kitchen and put on coffee.

As I waited for the Elixir of Life to brew, I took stock of how I felt. I was surprised at my tally: No more nose bleed, no head or body ache, no fever, no residual fatigue.

While the coffee pot gurgled, I did a few sets of lunges and girl-style pushups, some squats and stretches, and a three-minute Downward-Facing Dog to limber up. As I worked out, everything inside me tingled in a rather pleasant manner.

I grabbed my first cup of coffee and headed into the living room to savor it and enjoy a few minutes of peaceful leisure.

“Wha—” I don’t know how I’d forgotten that voice in my ear, but when it piped up, I jerked and tossed the contents of my mug at the same time.

All the stuff the nanomites had told me while my nose was bleeding came rushing back.

I shuddered. Oh, yeah. A more efficient and cooperative union. As I requested? Great.

I sopped up the slopped coffee with a towel then poured myself another cup. I set my mug on the dinette table this time and took a seat and a first tentative sip.

I tried to recall my exact words when I’d suggested to the nanomites that we needed a better means of communication. I hadn’t used the term “more efficient and cooperative union. Well, not exactly—or had I?

I remembered saying, “Nano, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m interested in improved, that is, enhanced, two-sided communication. More effective communication could lead to, um, greater exchanges of information and understanding, and, um, even consensus (gag) and cooperation between us. Enriched communication could result in, um, superior decisions—perhaps collaboration and mutual support—especially when we are in tight spots.”

And this little gem, “I wish we could find a means to function better. Together. More economically. More efficiently. Perhaps forge an, um, alliance or partnership.”

“Um, Nano . . . how do you . . . how are you talking to me? Do you have, um, mouths now?”

“Vibrations?” I mulled that one over. Well, but what is sound, other than vibrations?

I thought a bit more, speculated why their voice seemed to come from behind my shoulder or inside my ear. “Are you vibrating in my brain or my ear canal?”

We do not register a decrease in the ambient temperature attributable to our vibrations.

“What? Oh. (*snort-laugh*) No, I mean, um, ‘cool’ as in the slang for, um, interesting or, uh, good.”

I sipped my coffee and wondered what other surprises the mites’ “merge” would produce. I finished my coffee, poured another cup, and wandered back into the living room. Woke up the laptop and opened a browser window to peruse recent Albuquerque news. I loaded the KRQE website and scanned down the page.

Nothing of interest caught my eyes, but I’d been “out” for most of a day. I was browsing backward in the news archives when I experienced a sudden, disquieting revelation.

Wait a sec. The mites didn’t need to do the “merge” thing to talk to me, to make vibrations in my ear. They could have “vibro-talked” to me from the get-go.

LOCAL PASTOR ATTACKED

IN GANG-RELATED DISPUTE

An Albuquerque resident, Zander Cruz, associate pastor at Downtown Community Church, and an as-yet unidentified Albuquerque senior citizen were assaulted and beaten Thursday in what police describe as a gang-related altercation. Both Cruz and the elderly male have been hospitalized. No word on their condition has been released.

Ross Gamble huddled with Pete Diaz and Don Benally near a parked APD unit. Gamble appraised the cul-de-sac and its homes and saw nothing of note: The houses were aging but nice-enough looking. The yards—except one—were well-kept. Nothing remained of the police tape and police presence from the incident two days past.

Diaz grinned. “You asked me to keep you in the loop.” The other officer, Benally, silently followed their conversation.

“All right. So, day before yesterday, the man who lives in that house there, one Abraham Pickering, age 71,” he pointed to a home on the outlet of the cul-de-sac, “and his neighbor,” he pointed to the next house over, “got into it. Apparently, the neighbor guy has custody of his ten-year-old nephew. Last Thursday, Mr. Pickering reported to CYFD that the kid was being neglected and had taken to spending the night in the bushes.”

“Hold your horses; I’m trying to make a point. That neighbor,” he again pointed to the next house over, “happens to be Mateo Martinez.”

Gamble looked skeptical. “He lives there? Too tame of a crib for a gang banger, isn’t it? Too respectable; neighborhood’s too ‘nice’ for his ilk.”

“He inherited the house from his dad. I’ve interviewed the other neighbors except the young woman who lives there.” He gestured at the house sitting back and center of the cul-de-sac. “The folks all say that Martinez’s crew used to party here on a regular basis. By some unspoken agreement, the neighbors didn’t call APD and the gang didn’t bother the neighbors—if you don’t count the noise they made when carousing and the trash they left behind.”

Diaz looked at his notes. “The neighbors say Mr. Flores,” he tipped his head toward the house on the other side of Martinez’s, “used to sweep up the broken glass and whatever else the gang left behind. More on the neighbors in a sec.

“I interviewed the CYFD case officer, too, and she let me read Mr. Pickering’s complaint. He asserts that most times while the gang partied, Martinez’s nephew would hide out in the bushes. Then Pickering said he found the kid sitting on the curb one night dressed in nothing more than a t-shirt, jeans, and flip-flops. Overnight temps have been in the high forties, but the kid had no jacket. He was cold, unfed, and filthy. Pickering took him in and called CYFD.

“CYFD came and took the kid, but Mr. Pickering lost no time applying for temporary custody of him. Of course, until he is vetted and approved, the kid has to stay in CYFD custody—which is where he is right now. Right after CYFD took the kid, a social worker paid a visit to Mateo Martinez—but he wasn’t home. Guess she came by a couple of times. Same thing each time.

“On the day Martinez finally answered the door, the case worker was accompanied by an officer, and she had a warrant to enter the house and document its condition. Her report says it was a pigsty and the kitchen had no food.

“Crazy thing is, the kid had been gone maybe five nights and Martinez hadn’t even noticed he was missing. That didn’t keep him from blowing up on the case worker, though. When she wouldn’t tell him where Emilio was or who had reported him, the officer had to step in and make Martinez back off.

“Next day, Martinez confronted Mr. Pickering. The old man had kind of expected Martinez to show up; his friend, one Pastor Zander Cruz, was staying at the house so Pickering wouldn’t be alone when Martinez came calling. Well, Martinez didn’t show up by himself. He brought three of his crew with him, and they brought baseball bats.”

Diaz sighed. “Pickering got off one shot from a revolver before the gang beat the living crud out of him and Cruz. Pickering hit one of the gangers in the chest, but he’ll live. The old man, though, has a head wound and is in rough shape—they don’t know yet if he’ll make it or not. Cruz will survive, but he’s got cracked and broken bones and some nasty cuts and bruises.”

“Yeah, he’s disappeared—but remember I said I’d get back to the neighbors? Yeah, get this: They reported that, a few weeks before Martinez’s attack on Pickering and Cruz, Martinez had a visitor, a stranger. This guy rolled into the neighborhood in a sleek, expensive ride and was accompanied by some very intimidating men—but none of them as intimidating as the stranger himself.

“Martinez not only let them into his house but, ever since then, Martinez and his gang have been at this guy’s beck and call. Now get this: The word the neighbors use to describe this stranger? Downright scary.”

“We think so. We’re looking for Martinez, of course, and we think when we find him, we’ll find Soto.”

“Right. Unless Soto has already disposed of Martinez’s body in the desert.”

“That’s entirely possible. I doubt Soto approved of Martinez’s visit to Mr. Pickering. He wouldn’t appreciate the attention it drew to the gang.”

Diaz turned a thoughtful eye on Martinez’s empty house. “Here’s something else. Seems that this unlikely little neighborhood has seen more than its fair share of drama lately. Mrs. Belicia Calderón—lives in that house across there—described something on the scale of a military action taking place about the same time that Pickering made his complaint to CYFD.”

“That’s what I wondered, too. See the house between Mrs. Calderón and the Flores’? It’s vacant and boarded up right now, and no one seems to know where the young woman who lives there has gone. However, she was at the center of the incident Mrs. Calderón described.”

“So, why bring that up? Whatever it was, it can’t have anything to do with Martinez.”

Diaz chuckled. “Yeah, you’d think so, ’cept Mrs. Calderón—who, by the way, has her nose in everything that happens around here—added some interesting details to her tale. According to her, the young guy whom Mateo’s thugs beat up is the missing woman’s boyfriend.”

“Oh, and Mr. Pickering is this same woman’s good friend. Something of a father figure.”

“Well, as Alice said in Wonderland, the situation gets curiouser and curiouser. Mrs. Calderón gave me a real earful on her next-door neighbor—I guess she is no fan of Miss Keyes.”

“Gemma Keyes. She’s the missing woman. Twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, single. Former contractor employee at Sandia.”

Gamble’s brows scrunched. “I’m not seeing all the connections yet, but I am puzzled about this so-called military action. What was that about? How did Mrs. Calderón describe it?”

Something wrapped itself around Gamble’s leg. He flinched and looked down. A cat—a categorically ugly specimen of Felis catus—rubbed against him.

Diaz chuckled. “This is Gemma Keyes’ cat, Jake. Disreputable old tom, according to the neighbors. Quite the character and very discriminating. No one in the cul-de-sac will touch him—they’re all afraid to.”

Diaz was enjoying Gamble’s disgust way too much. He grinned as he added, “Since Miss Keyes disappeared, Abe Pickering has been feeding the cat. With Pickering in the hospital, Mr. and Mrs. Flores and the Tuckers have been putting out food for him.”

Jake arched his back and stretched up Gamble’s left leg, using his claws for purchase.

“Ow! Get off of me!” Gamble shook his leg and Jake, with his tail high in the air, pranced away. Gamble swore under his breath. “That is one ugly cat.”

“The way Mrs. Calderón tells it, around 9 p.m. on the twenty-ninth of last month, several military-like vehicles, lights off, drove into the cul-de-sac, followed by two trucks with banks of spotlights. A group of soldiers and plainclothes people, guns drawn, stormed Miss Keyes’ house and broke down the side door. A last vehicle rolled in and a uniformed woman—ostensibly the boss—got out. When her people came up empty for Miss Keyes, the boss ordered her team to question the other cul-de-sac residents. They went around to the neighbors and grilled them for about an hour before they packed up and left.”

“Sounds implausible. Fabricated or highly embellished by this Calderón woman.”

Diaz laughed outright this time. “Yeah, when she first told me about it, I thought to myself, ‘Here’s the local fruitcake.’ Then I revisited the other neighbors, the Flores and Tuckers. Mr. and Mrs. Flores were out of town at the time the incident supposedly took place, but the Tuckers were not.”

“And they watched the whole thing from their front porch. Confirmed every detail.”

“Interesting.” Gamble turned in a circle, scanning the area again. “Uniforms?”

“Yeah, but Mrs. Calderón doesn’t know Army from Air Force. She didn’t recall any patches or insignias on the soldiers, though. Just that everything was black—black uniforms, flak jackets, helmets, guns.”

“No identifying patches? I don’t like it. That fact in itself is troubling.”

“Yeah. The rest of the personnel wore standard street clothes. Like I said, curiouser and curiouser.”

“Maybe, but no markings on the uniforms? And I wonder why no one heard anything about it. No notice to other LEOs, no reports in the news. Total silence.”

Diaz shifted his feet. “And one more thing. Late that night, the same tactical team stormed Gemma Keyes’ house a second time. The noise woke Mrs. Calderón, and she watched from her window.”

“Not that Mrs. Calderón saw. The team came, tore through the house, pulled a few things from it, and handed them over to the boss lady.”

“Yes. Nada. Not a thing. She held a Q clearance as a subcontractor to Sandia until she was let go last spring, and she doesn’t have so much as a traffic ticket.”

“You got me, but her connection with Abe Pickering and Reverend Cruz—and tangentially with Mateo Martinez and Arnaldo Soto—is interesting, don’t you think? Oh, and during the interviews earlier the evening of the raid, Mrs. Calderón spoke personally with the boss lady—the woman in charge of the raid. Told her Miss Keyes had been behaving oddly for about two months—that she was living in the house, but no one had laid eyes on her for a while.”

Gamble was distracted, still hung up on the “military” aspect of the raid. “I dunno. We’re supposed to be notified if Homeland takes action in our jurisdictions. The whole thing is too weird sounding. Doesn’t smell right.”

“Yup, but whatcha gonna do? The feds—no offense intended—the feds do what they want more times than not.”

Gamble barked a sardonic laugh. “No offense taken. Even among us there are ‘feds’ and then there are ‘Feds.’ Layers of bureaucracy, hierarchy, and political machinations. Sometimes you just mind your own business and look the other way. Go along to get along.”

He gave a last scan to the neighborhood and offered Diaz his hand. “Thanks for the heads up, Diaz. I think I’ll try to talk to this Reverend Cruz if he’s up for it. Where’s he at?”

“Nano.” My heart thundered and I couldn’t draw in a complete breath. I closed my eyes against the rising panic.

My voice shook. “Nano. Find Zander and Abe. They are in an Albuquerque hospital. Find them!”

The nanomites went to work. The sound of their busyness seemed amplified, and it was more distinct and diversified than it had been in other instances, less a single source of white noise. I closed my eyes and focused on differentiating between the sounds I heard.

Pretty soon I identified three—no, four?—separate channels of sounds. Five? As I concentrated on what I heard, I sank down, into a trance-like state. The mites were mining data via the neighbor’s Internet connection, and I . . . I thought I could hear the data streaming by, like a rushing, babbling current, moving through the nanoswarm.

The mites were chasing the data, filtering it, sorting it, and I became engrossed in their work.

Directly behind my closed eyelids, bits of pictures and images skittered. They flew from left to right with blinding speed. My eyes tried to follow; they flickered back and forth as though I were in deep REM. My head twitched in a minute but rapid, side-to-side movement.

If that weren’t weird enough, the meaning of the images as they flashed in front of my closed eyes became clear. Crystal clear. Bytes of information. Scraps of data. Dates. Facts. Records. Vivid impressions.

I could see it, the information the nanomites were pulling from the Internet! It almost felt . . . it seemed as if I could reach out and touch—

I both saw and comprehended disparate objects in the data flow as the stream became a river that gushed past me.

I couldn’t contain it all, and I couldn’t detach from the flow. It was sweeping me away! I couldn’t keep up, couldn’t open my eyes to end it—it was out of my control.

Gemma Keyes. We will moderate the amount of adrenaline your body is producing and release neurotransmitters to calm you.

But it did not stop. The deluge of information kept coming and coming and coming. I struggled and fought against the torrent, to no avail—but then my heart began to slow, my anxiety to ease up.

As the data rushed and coursed over me, I gave up trying to keep it out: My efforts were futile anyway. Instead, I turned inward and focused my thoughts on Zander and Abe. This mental trick had an amazing effect. Out of the river of information, I snagged something pertaining to Abe, then a fragment about Zander. I grasped them and held on. Or were they sticking to me by themselves? I snatched more relevant morsels from the stream.

When my “arms” were full, I put what I’d gathered in a stack to the side, but I found that I was thirsty for more. I stared, transfixed, into the data flow—I leaned toward it and reached my hands into it.

It was not enough! My thirst grew, and I stepped into the rushing stream. I waded into its deluge, stood within its rapids, and let it wash over me.

Information I desired came to me like iron filings to a magnet—and still I wanted more.

I found myself sorting the data, fending off irrelevant bits and bytes of information with the flick of a finger, stacking what I wanted to the side. The faster the data came, the better at sorting it I got.

As I amassed information, the space around me grew. I looked far to the right and farther to the left and had the sensation of gazing into the depths of a warehouse—an immense, cavernous warehouse.

Then . . . the river of data slowed. The piles I had sorted and stacked to the side remained, but the flow of bits and bytes slowed to a trickle. Dissipated. Died.

In place of the river of data I heard chittering. A lot of chittering. Back and forth.

My innate instinct to survive kicked in, demanded that I pull away, get out of this “warehouse,” and return to reality—but that insatiable hunger to know clawed at me. Rather than pull away, I placed my hands over my eyes to seal them shut, to ensure that I would remain in the place where I understood so much—and craved so much more.

Vistas I’d never dreamed of opened before me. And only one possibility existed to explain the voices in my head.

From my place in the warehouse, I pondered their words. “Only six? I thought . . . trillions. Dr. Bickel said trillions! How can you be only six?”

Wrestling with confusion, I asked, “Six? Dr. Bickel said five tribes. What is the sixth tribe, Nano?”

I huffed at the runaround and repeated, “Yes? I’m here. What is the sixth tribe, Nano?”

I gulped, sat up, sat back, kept my palms squeezed tight over my eyes. Did they mean what I thought they meant?

I turned my attention to the stacks and stacks of data I’d gathered. Opened my arms and let their information come to me.

“Nano. Abe and Zander are at UNM Hospital. Zander is on an adult surgical floor. Abe is in—” I choked when I tried to say “medical intensive care.”

Yes. We have located them also. In the interest of better communication and consensus, what is your recommendation?

Yes, Gemma Keyes. We are waiting for you to communicate your recommendation so we might consider all options and arrive at consensus.

Hot, fierce anger coiled in my chest. I couldn’t speak what was raging in my heart: Consider this, Nano! Let’s arrive at consensus on this, shall we? I want to kill the men who hurt Abe and Zander. I want to destroy them. Decimate them. I want to obliterate Mateo Martinez.

I tore my hands from my eyes. I was out of the “warehouse,” back on the sofa in Dr. Bickel’s safe house—but I could still hear the nanomites in my ear.

In the interest of better communication and consensus, what is your recommendation?