Bio-Strike

EPILOGUE

He had spent millions. Tens upon tens of millions. And every last dollar had been wasted.

Harlan DeVane sat on the veranda of his expansive Spanish ranch house in the Chapare region of Bolivia, staring out at the cattle fields in silence, watching his imported heifers graze on the grass with plodding bovine contentment. Once, perhaps, some primal forerunner of the beasts must have had at least a spark of driving fire in its breast. But that had been bred out of the species when their free-roaming herds became livestock, their migrations became limited by the corral fence, and their inborn fear of the predator was dulled to a birth promise of certain slaughter.

DeVane watched them, thinking that he could walk across the pasture to where they were gathered in a patch of green, put a gun to one of their heads at random, and fire, and that the others were apt to go on chewing lazily or produce some lowing sound of momentary bafflement as the victim dropped in a heap among them with what little brains it possessed leaching deep into the dirt. All of them unaware of the fate that had narrowly missed being theirs. All incapable of appreciating that they lived by a simple fluke.

His eyes at once motionless and searching, his thin features caught in the ever-still space between thought and expression, DeVane suddenly recalled a string of words from an old leather-bound volume in his library: What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

He breathed, as always, without a sound.

These were idle musings, and there were far more important matters to occupy his mind. Matters from which he could only divert himself temporarily, for they were bound to catch up with him, tearing at his false peace like the swipe of claws in the night.

The Sleeper virus that was to have gained him a fortune beyond any ever amassed, prestige beyond any imaginable height — given him the power to steer the sun across the sky — had brought him instead to abject humiliation. With the inhibitors now as commonly available as aspirin, his customers had paid vast sums for genetic triggers that were worth less to them than dust. Some had targeted victims by the hundreds, the thousands, and more. He had wanted only the death of a single man, Roger Gordian… and none had gotten the thing for which they had put their good money down.

So what was left for him now? What goddamned pipes and timbrels?

Humiliation. Ignominy. Clients who had become enemies by the score.

And because of Siegfried Kuhl’s ineffectiveness, his failure to eliminate Gordian even by brute, overt force of hand, the very strong chance that the careful screens that ensured his anonymity, that allowed him to roam the world free, would begin to be peeled away.

DeVane closed his eyes and slowly, slowly bent his head back so it was exposed in full to the strong, tropical sun. The rays stung his pale, almost colorless skin, and he knew it would not take long before he burned.

He sat there and did not move.