53 Miles West of Venus Ch. 08

This all fit the wounds from the rooftop explosion. Old beer kegs loaded with explosives and improvised shrapnel like junk steel ... and lots of ball bearings had pretty much done what they had been designed to do, take out a helicopter landing an assault force. Claire had been about halfway inside that helicopter when I blew the roof, gaining some slight partial protection, at least for her head. Surprisingly, if her neck and spine hadn't been fractured in at least three different places by the helicopter crash occurring after that explosion, the odds were likely that Claire might have been already up and rolling about in a wheelchair, and starting her full recovery with artificial limbs in a few months.

She'd been damned, damned lucky! Now it was imperative that I get a few answers from her!

For starters, I turned off her narcotic flow into her IV. I'm not really that medically savvy, but Carol Granger, Robert's corporate resident Physician's Assistant, had given me a fairly exhaustive overview of what I'd be likely to encounter here. Complete with a simulated test dummy hooked up an IV, intubation and feeding tubes. She showed me how to disconnect and reconnect them all, if necessary. Not to mention how, when and where to use the contents of a small zippered pouch containing five different pre-prepared syringes.

It would take a while for the cessation of the narcotic drip to start rousing her, so I devoted the next five minutes or so to examining her patient chart at the foot of her bed. This also held a copy of most of her admission papers and several surgical reports from the original El Paso hospital where she'd received her emergency surgeries. The current prognosis from her attending doctor was mixed. Claire was out her coma and her vital signs were slowly improving, but she was still very much in guarded condition. Reading between the lines of an awful lot of doctor-speak, it appeared that she had somewhat less than a 50% chance of survival for the next week, but surviving that her odds would then significantly improve daily thereafter. This was a hospice though, a place where some do recover ... but most folks go to die.

I snorted with vague amusement. Claire was at least as stubborn as my family friend Ted and far more self-centered. I'd have bet that her original odds of surviving the explosion and helicopter crash would have been just 5%, at best. She'd beaten all of the odds for a full week and lived ... now that she was conscious again her will to survive would only increase. Claire was a survivor.

The rest of her medical files were only marginally interesting, but I took the time to add a few minor corrections to her records, such as noting Claire's extreme insect bite allergy. Her allergy warning bracelet was currently missing from her arm, but the AIS team that extracted her (the survivors anyway), would have removed it from her before dumping her mangled body near the hospital, while making their final getaway. Fortunately for her, I'd brought along one of her spares, complete with her documented allergy registration information and after making one last final notation I attached the bracelet to her remaining right wrist, just below her IV. Now it was time to wake her up.

First, I disconnect the alarm on her heartbeat monitor. No, I wasn't going to smother her here and now, but I couldn't be sure that her heart wouldn't race or even slightly defib after I added the stimulant to her IV. Her assigned attending physician had already made his morning round and the next hourly round by the floor nurse wouldn't be for just over a half-hour yet to come, and I didn't want any early interruptions. Now I selected the first syringe from the packet of five that Granger had provided me. This was a relatively mild stimulant that we hoped could wake Claire, assuming she was only lightly under sedation.

Unfortunately, even after a fitful wait of nearly twenty minutes, her vitals weren't stimulated much. Her head moved once and maybe her eyes flickered open for a half-second, but not longer. Since I was running out of time, I decided to go with syringe #2, a different and slightly stronger stimulant. This treatment boded better ... but still after another ten minutes or Claire blearily blinking at me for a moment before closing her eyes again, I had to admit temporary defeat. It was now five minutes to 11am, and the floor nurse would be starting her hourly rounds and would walk in here in about ten minutes or less. Not enough time to question her, even if I could get Claire fully responsive right now ... which she definitely wasn't.

Out of time, for this hour anyway, I pushed the housekeeping trolley cart into the small ensuite bathroom and shut the door. Then just about the time I heard footsteps starting to come down the walkway I scooted myself out the open glass sliding door and onto the patio garden and made myself scarce for the next ten minutes. Enough time to scamper around to the back of the center and onto the cafeteria wing. I scrounged up a rather unremarkable sandwich that I gobbled in hasty fits back in the front garden until my watch proclaimed that it was ten past the hour and the danger was likely passed. Then I dashed back to Claire's room, expecting to find that the glass patio doors to be closed shut, but they remained as I had left them.

Claire's chart only showed a brief additional note that her vitals had been checked at 11:05am and even her door had been left again mostly closed, as I had left it. Her morphine drip was still off, but my patient still wasn't any more responsive. So ... I gave her half of the contents of the third syringe. A full dose, I had been told, would probably revive a dead elephant and start it tap dancing.

"'ave..." Claire weakly whispered when her eyes managed to lift themselves fully open and focus in on my face leaning anxiously. "'watar, pees'", she then managed to articulate. I reached over to get the bottle of water from her tableside and let her drink for a minute from the straw. She then drank some more and her words began to require a bit less translation to be understood. Claire could indeed now communicate, but only in short simple thoughts that weren't much better than grunts. Her vitals were now a bit elevated from normal, but alright enough. Giving her the rest of that 3^rd syringe probably wasn't a safe idea, so grunts were going to have to do!

"'plossion ... on 'oof," she muttered to me, now rather wide eyed, as if this was her last previous recollection of things. It probably was.

"Yes, Claire," I whispered to her, giving her again the option to take another long sip from the water bottle, that was already half empty. "Your friends from AIS came as arranged to pick you up and right on time for a very special party that we had arranged for them. Now Claire, think hard, this is very important ... did you give them anything? Before the explosion, while we were in Venus, or did you take anything with you, up on the roof that night?"

'Roof... 'acelet on my arm ... e'eething there ... my filles, ev'rthin th ... air." She then looked over to her remaining right arm and when she saw the bracelet still on her arm she managed sort of nod towards it and began to glance about the room in growing agitation. It seemed that she was just now discovering that she couldn't feel or control any of her limbs, and that for certain some parts of her seemed to be missing. Maybe she could start feeling the pain now too, as her speech became slightly clearer and her thoughts more focused. I'd told you that Claire would have a will to live.

"No, this is a new bracelet, not the old one you wore at the crater. The one that you had modified to hold a microUSB drive, is that the one you had Claire that they took from you?" I grabbed her right arm and guided it closer to her so that she could see it. This one wasn't identical to the one she'd kept (and rarely only worn) at the crater, and after a moment she shook her head.

"Did you give or tell them anything else? Anything? Claire, we have to have the truth about how much damage has been done. You're very badly hurt and at best you're going to be in a wheelchair from now on. AIS certainly didn't pay you and now that they've taken your bracelet with the USB they don't need you anymore. They just dumped you onto the street in El Paso after the crash, no ID or money, just a Jane Doe needing a lot of extremely expensive critical emergency room care and two more surgeries in the week following. You owe us for saving you! Tell me what happened!"

"No bonus," she hissed, "my work ... it was work that made it possible. Merging spider and silkworm DNA to form the perfect indestructible silk stronger than steel or titanium. The secrecy ... robbed me of my Nobel price and millions ... they promised me those millions, and more! Your fault!" Her voice by now was clear enough to hear the anger and the spite. I could see it now in her eyes that she hadn't the slightest regret in betraying us, then ... or even now.

"You had a contract. You signed the papers and knew the deal. Perfect the biological hybrid through the beta test project in the mine until the manufacturing process was completely perfected and then transferred for production to the island. You'd get your millions then, and gratefully. As for the Nobel, you'd knew upfront that you'd have to wait to publish your results for another seven years but you'd receive your due, your honors as promised. You wanted it all, now ... and made a deal to kill all of us in the crater to get it. Why? And again, did you give them anything, anything else other than your bracelet?"

It's hard for a paralyzed body in a hospital bed to shrug and show condescension, but she gave it a good try. No ... she had no regrets at all. The arrogance had always been there in Claire's character but she could play at being charming enough to disguise most of it.

For the next ten minutes Claire wouldn't speak or even look at me, even when I shook her head by her feelingless shoulders, but her heart remained feeling-less too. In the end I had to bribe her, offering to turn back on her narcotic drip if she'd talk. The pain was probably getting pretty intense by then and she at last broke silence and began to speak in a surprising clear but quiet voice.

"No, they got nothing from me until I was to get paid. Supposed to get me in town in Aphrodite that day but you were there and then I decided to raise the price. The final plan was pick me up on the roof and take me to their bosses at AIS in Okie. Ten million cash on the table upfront and I'd then give them the research, all of it. Rest of the money, forty million later in stock. What they really wanted from me was your plans ... what you were going to make with it. I told them bulletproof silk, bodysuits for soldiers and stuff like that. Maybe for other armor too. I'd heard you say something like that with Peggy once, but I didn't know for sure what it was for on the island. That is what you're doing, right?"

"Sure ... among a few other things," I whispered into her right ear, "now let me get that drip restarted and I'll improve your knowledge of a few facts before you drift back off to a nice narcotic slumber." True to my word I restarted the morphine drip just as it had been before, no more no less. I also took out the 4^th syringe and with my back turned to her hiding the injection, I added it contents to the saline of the main IV drip. This drug was harmless, but it would fairly rapidly neutralize the stimulants I'd previously injected and it would act as a masking agent to hide their previous presence, in the very unlikely event that anyone took a blood sample from her later today. This would give me about five minutes left with Claire before she dozed off again.

Plenty of time, not to mention that I had another half hour before the next nurses' round to complete our conversation.

"Claire, you're going to fall back asleep again in just a few minutes but listen to me closely first and I'll correct a few last misconceptions. First, Phyl found out about your allergy bracelet containing the hidden microUSB and we switched them on you. Because you almost never wore it and you were always losing the thing you had another exact identical duplicate with an empty internal data hub too. Phyl switched them out right before the games started and she pocketed the real one with the data, but not before we had copied a bunch of fake data files into your new copy. Nearly a Gig's worth of random scientific journals and research papers all encrypted at a crazy level. All pure junk ... and if they spend six months with a top of the line NSA grade super-computer they might be able to decrypt and read some of them someday. If they're lucky in about six months, assuming that drive wasn't still at the AIS corporate HQ a few days ago when it blew up and burned down in flames."

"Your friends got nothing..." I repeated to her and it was a delight watching her face turn sallow with shock as her jaw dropped.

"My work..." she started to slur again as I eyes began to lose a little of their focus. The narcotics were starting to kick in again. I'd have to finish up fast.

"Was utterly invaluable!" I assured her, "Because of you, yes, Poravuvu will equip an army with bulletproof uniforms that can face ten times or more its size of attacking forces, but far more importantly your modified spider/silkworm thread is stronger than carbon fiber, Kevlar or Zylon ... nearly as strong as carbon nano-tubes, which are a bitch to manufacture. Mass produced now on Poravuvu, we're already produced enough cable to reach low earth orbit and next year we'll have at least another thousand miles of cable, maybe even two thousand more, enough to send up right into middle earth orbit itself! But we're going a wee bit further still."

Claire's sleepy eyes winked wide open and for a moment she regained her wits.

"A space elevator..." she murmured fairly clearly as her eyes began to close again, quite against her will. "Nearly free access to orbit ... then space and beyond. The entire riches of the solar system at our hands. A monopoly on access to space ... ahhhh ... the political power ... the riches. We'd control everything... everything ... sooo rich!" she quietly whispered as the narcotics began to numb her mind and speech.

"But not for you princess, it's now time for you to sleep. We just can't have you trying to sell our secrets yet once again. But as my word is my honor, when I can, your research will get published someday giving you overdue, but full credit. I'm sorry that you can't be there with us in about five years when our elevator first climbs into the sky. Honestly, I can sort of, almost forgive you. Everyone knew that you were crazy greedy when we hired you, but in truth no one else but you could have taken us this far, this fast. We've now actually got a chance to succeed before anyone else learns about us and tries to stop us or control us instead. Phyl warned me over and over the last few days we were together that your lips would need to remain silent, forever ... so, this last little parting farewell gift is from Phyl. It was entirely her idea and she would have wanted very, very much to have been here today to give this to you personally, but I'm afraid you managed to get her killed, due to your friends at AIS.

"Sweet dreams Claire ... sorry I can't play you any B-52's while you drift away. Goodnight princess." Claire was just still awake enough to try and move her head away from me as I bent over to kiss her on the cheek. I'd never liked her ... but we'd worked together alright for nearly three years so I felt like I owed her some basic human considerations, despite her crimes.

The last item in Grangers medical pouch was a very small glass ampoule much like an eye-stopper with a tiny injection tip and rubber squeeze tube at the end and I carefully pressed it firmly against Claire's arm. Her head jerked nearly immediately and if she had had control of her arm I'm sure it would spasmed. The injection was for a refined solution of concentrated bee venom that would with Claire's highly allergic susceptibility to that toxin, cause anaphylactic shock in just a minute, no more than two. The ampoule was designed to also implant an actual bee's stinger into the skin. For good measure, after removing the rubber squeezer at the end, a dead bee (minus stinger) was then available to be dropped onto the floor. Which I now did. Bees do die nearly immediately after stinging their foe.

Taking Claire's hand in mine I held it tight, but of course she couldn't feel it. The 'bee sting' site was growing rapidly inflamed and in less than I minute I could tell from the machines monitoring her vitals that her entire system was in acute respiratory distress. The allergic reaction to the venom was massive, probably enough to have killed Claire in minutes even if she'd been at peak health. Missing one of her lungs, it didn't take much airway constriction to threaten her breathing significantly.

In total, it took less than two minutes for her vital monitor to declare an alarm condition, which had I not disabled the sound earlier would have sent warning to the nursing staff. Code Blue or Red or something, but the alarm remained silent. If the nurses responded now, they had a small chance of saving her with a massive injectable epinephrine shot, but I waited there holding her hand until I was sure that her dead body was already cooling before I let go of her to leave.

A check of the clock showed that it was five minutes until noon and I wanted to be well gone, at least out of the immediate area before the rounds nurse discovered that Claire had died. I was a bit behind schedule, but I wasn't the kind of guy to just kill and run. I needed to kill Claire for Phyl ... and to preserve the Great Undertaking, that damned space elevator plan of Wheels that he had devoted nearly half of his nearly immortal life to. I patted Claire's head one last time and left, making sure not to step on the dead bee.

There was just time to roll out the housekeeping trolley back into the hallway and I left it parked there outside of another room about two doors up towards the nurse's station from Claire's. There was no one at the desk and I scampered away out of the building without passing anyone along the way.

I was hungry but in no mood to eat, so I changed clothes in my rental car and sat in it at the back of the parking lot by the garden watching Claire's room with a strong pair of binoculars. It was very anti-climatic. There was no big fuss over her death, no big rush of doctors or influx of staff with lifesaving equipment. After a brief confab, a pair of nurses made a few notes on her chart and left, shutting the door entirely behind them. The local county funeral home van showed up about an hour later and I left after they did. The county coroner at the morgue probably wouldn't even bother with an autopsy, but if they did they'd look up Claire's allergy bracelet number in the national database and find (easily) the bee sting they'd have an open and shut case. The blood work would all be murky to process at best, and at worse, inconclusive. Hospice patients tended to die. In Claire's case it could have been side effects from ER treatment and her two surgeries or just the toll of her massive injuries. Very reasonable. The DNR (Do Not Recessitate) order written into her medical records by a sloppy hand (mine) would synch things. Claire was expected to die of her injuries and she had. Next patient...

I made a note to myself to make sure that Liam arranged for a small tombstone or plaque with her name at the county potter's field, once they'd buried or cremated her. The later the far most likely to save the county costs. What she had done was important to us and her name needed to be remembered ... but perhaps later.