Free Vitals by Greg Bear Page A

another cigarette.
    Our generation had taken up Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, reading cheap paperbacks, wearing black suits, and smoking cigarettes, like all the war-weary lemmings of the 1950s, but without their excuses.
    I felt sick.
    After a bad night's sleep on the fourth floor of the Homeaway, just blocks from the Genetron Building and my rented lab, I opened the
    curtains. Across Lake Union, morning fog slid over the rusty tanks and pipes and broad lawn of Gasworks Park. I stood there for five minutes, feeling fortunate.
    I was no Jonah. It wasn't me that was hexed. I had survived, and that meant I was lucky, maybe even on the right track in this great scheme of things. Only the FBI and a couple of murders were in my way, and that pissed me off.
    Rob would have recognized my mood instantly. Prince Hal was not getting his way.
    A cell phone rang on the nightstand. Data phones in the U.S. had been screwed up for weeks with viruses. I carried four with me, on four different systems, just to make sure: a Palm Sec an Info Buddy and two standard Nokias.
    It was the Palm Sec that was beeping. The pert little A.M. triple tone told me two things: that I had a call, and that it was before noon. I flipped open the jacket, keyed in my unlock, and answered. "Cousins."
    "Dr. Cousins, Betty Shun. How are you?"
    "Dandy," I said, and regretted the flippancy.
    "We're very sad here," she said. "We've lost a lot of friends."
    "Yes. I know."
    "We need to get together. I'll bring along a man who also works for Owen. He wants to talk with you."
    "When?" I asked.
    "We're in a car in front of your hotel. We'll take you to the Crab Cart for breakfast."
    I had been given my marching orders. But I wanted to find out about my specimens. Time was running out.
    As always.
    Betty Shun stood in the lobby, dressed in a green-leather coat and green slacks. I turned and saw a blocky, balding man in his late forties push through the men's room door, blowing on his hands. He made sure they were dry before he offered to shake.
    "Hal Cousins, this is Kelly Bloom," Betty introduced. Shun, Bloom, Press ... I was seeing a pattern here, all members of the Monosyllabic Verb club. Bloom wore denim all over--denim pants, denim jacket with brass buttons, a blue-denim shirt. And Air Jordans, old but scrubbed clean.
    "Dr. Cousins, first off, congratulations," Bloom said. "Let's get out of here and go someplace quiet."
    They escorted me to the drive. I had expected a limousine or at the very least a BMW, but the car parked in front of the hotel lobby, beaded with rain and speckled with mud, was a mid-nineties Ford Taurus, conspicuously purple, with a dented right fender and scrape marks all along the driver's side.
    "Yours?" I asked Bloom. He grinned.
    "It's going to be a long day, isn't it?" I asked Betty. She gave me a studied smile.
    The Crab Cart was quiet and dark. In the back, under windows overlooking yachts at private moorings, the booths were separated by barriers of glass and wood. Betty ordered first, oatmeal and two eggs. Bloom had nothing, not even coffee, maintaining his ascetic posture. I ordered a bowl of Wheat Chex, toast, and a small crab omelet. Bloom
    I,
    smiled as I laced into my food. Betty ate half her oatmeal, both of her eggs, and patted her mouth fastidiously with the cloth napkin.
    The questions began. Bloom spoke in a pillowy bass, with a gentle North Carolina accent. He kept his hands folded on the oak tabletop. "Do you know why anyone would want to kill you?" he asked.
    "No," I said. "You're a private investigator, aren't you?"
    "We both work with Owen's security detail," Betty answered. She cocked her head at my raised eyebrow. "Did you think I was window dressing?" She laughed, a tinkling trill. "Owen can afford much prettier, just not much smarter, or more cautious."
    "Okay," Bloom said. "You understand we aren't trying to go around the police investigation, and that we have no authority? You don't have to answer."
    "Decent of you to