Earth Thirst (The Arcadian Conflict) - By Mark Teppo Page 0,96
hallway into a room that looks out over the front of the villa. The room is spartan—wooden chair, desk, and tiny chaise lounge—and a full-sized laptop, not the tiny netbook I had bought back in Santiago, is the only indicator that we're still in the twenty-first century. Tacked up on the opposite wall from the desk are Mere's charts: another version of the sheet from the hotel, even more byzantine now with its lines and bubbles, and a narrow strip of brown paper upon which she has drawn a crude map of the western side of South America.
I wander over to the maps and start examining them, listening as Mere runs through the highlights of the news over the past week. The fire alarm at Montoya's penthouse turned out to be a fortuitous act on a resident's part as a bomb explosion not two hours later decimated the top floor of the building. The Chilean military wanted to call it a terrorist attack and the local Santiago police were claiming it was an assassination attempt by a industrial competitor of the Montoya family. Either way, most of the city got locked down and the news media was still scrambling to figure out which of the thousands of rumors flying around were true. The entire country was in an uproar over the event, even though no one knew anything specific.
It sounds like a pretty standard cluster-fuck and cover-up. Montoya blows the penthouse, covering the dead strike team up there, and the resultant confusion allows him to spirit away the mess at the hotel as well. The martial lockdown might have been meant to seal us inside the city limits, but Phoebe did the right thing by getting us out immediately after rescuing Mere. We've done it a thousand times. Go in, do the deed, get out. Don't be there when the local media and police swarm the area. Keep moving as far away as fast as possible. In twelve hours, there won't be enough useful data to track anyone.
Though only a day's drive was a little close to go to ground, and as I decipher Mere's notes on the geography map, I realize why they chose the spot they did. “You're charting Arcadian-friendly spots.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “Phoebe gave me the idea when she said you needed good dirt. During the drive up from Santiago, I realized that was the way I was going to find them.”
“Them?”
“Hyacinth.” She joins me at the map and elucidates some of her squiggles. “You remember Mnemosysia? They're the ones out of Denver, Colorado, who are trying to create memory retention therapies. I thought they were running out of money, and I don't have my notes on hand to be sure, but over the last few days, I haven't been able to find nearly as much data as I had thought I had. I know it's impossible to scrub the Internet, but it certainly feels like someone has been trying. But let's stick with that basic assumption, okay? Let's assume Mnemosysia is having money troubles. They need a miracle to get them to their next milestone, and someone comes up with a shortcut.”
“Whale brains,” I provide, indicating that I remember our previous conversation.
“Right. And so they need a supply of raw material.” Her finger traces along a line on the sheet. “Now, Kyodo Kujira is in similar financial straits. They happen to have a whaling fleet that's ready to go if someone would actually cover the costs of putting them out to sea.” There's a question mark in a triangle next to Mere's notation of Kyodo Kujira. “If Mnemosysia doesn't have the money, then who steps up? And what are they getting out of the deal? And why are they a silent partner?” Mere looks at me and raises her eyebrow.
“Memory drugs,” I say.
“Memory drugs,” she repeats. “I didn't make the connection earlier, but now, knowing you a little better—knowing what happens to Arcadians—it seems obvious. Arcadia would fund this research, wouldn't they?”
“Except for the bit about having to kill whales for the research,” I point out.
“True, but that's the hook, isn't it? That's what gets Arcadia interested. It's not about whaling. Whaling has been going on for centuries. It's about the reason why they're whaling, and that reason is one that Arcadia would be interested in, yes?”
I nod. I wasn't privy to the Grove's decision to send the team—team members typically aren't informed of all the various intricacies of their missions—and, given what has happened since,