Pattern Recognition

"Rohypnol. Date-rape stuff. Could've killed you, but that's our Mama. You had a paradoxical reaction, though. Supposed to make you anybody's kitten, but it looked like you'd gone medieval on her."

"Did I? Were you there?"

"No. I was just checking in when the ambulance and the police arrived. You know that scene in old movies, when the cowboy's dying of thirst in the desert, and the cavalry arrives, and they say, 'Drink this, but not too much"?"

She stares at him.

He unclips a plastic canteen from his belt and passes it to her.

She takes a mouthful, swishes it around, spits it out, then drinks.

"Mama was still trying to lobby for control of the situation, looked to me," he says, "but with a bloody nose and one eye swollen shut, it was hard for her to be convincing."

"You knew it was her?"

"No. Wouldn't have known it was you, either, if I hadn't heard 'Pollard,' or something like it, about five times. Actually I'd seen a couple of pictures, on Google, but you weren't exactly looking your best, on that gurney there. Seemed to me that the lady with the nosebleed, though, she was pushing so hard that she was on the verge of getting arrested. I think she was arguing they should just take you up to your room and she'd stay with you. Then three guys in black leather coats showed up, and everyone but Mama went instantly deferential. You just sort of evaporated, with your little gurney, no more muss, and Mama went with the coats, looking none too happy about it. Me, I was feeling left out. I checked my e-mail. One from you, with Stella's address. I e-mailed her. Told her I was your friend, and what I'd just seen. Thirty minutes later I was in a BMW with a blue flasher and a fresh set of black coats, running reds and doing downtown Moscow in the wrong lane. Next thing I knew, I was up in one of the Seven Sisters, with Volkov—"

"Sisters?"

"Little old Commie Gothic skyscrapers with wedding-cake frills. Very high-end real estate. Your Mr. Bigend—"

"Bigend?"

"And Stella. Plus a bunch of Volkovites and this Chinese hacker from Oklahoma—"

"Boone?"

"The guy who's been hacking your hotmail for Bigend."

She remembers the room in Hongo, Boone cabling his laptop to hers.

"Excuse me," he said, then, "but that dust you've been rolling in has way too much titanium in it. You've probably already exceeded your MDR on that stuff. Why don't you let me get the medic over here to help get you to the helicopter?" He takes the canteen, drinks, caps it, puts it back on his belt.

"Titanium?"

"Soviet eco-disaster. Not as big as drying up the Aral Sea, but you've been hiking down the middle of a forty-mile strip of catastrophic industrial pollution, about two miles wide. I think you want to have a very in-depth shower."

"Where are we?"

"About eight hundred miles north of Moscow."

"What day?"

"Friday night. You went under Wednesday, and you were out until whenever you woke up today. I think they probably sedated you."

She tries to get to her feet, but suddenly he's there, hands on her shoulders. "Don't. Stay put." The weird one-eyed binoculars are dangling a few inches from her face. He straightens up, turning into the glare. He waves to the helicopter. "If they hadn't had these night-vision glasses," he says, over his shoulder, "we might not have found you."

"WHAT do you know about the Russian prison system?" he asks her. They're both wearing big greasy beige plastic headsets with microphones and green curly cords. The ear cups have enough soundproofing to muffle the roar of the engine, but he sounds like he's down a fairly deep well.

"That it's not fun?"

"HIV and tuberculosis are endemic. It gets worse from there. Where we're going is basically a privatized prison."

"Privatized?"

"A bold New Russian entrepreneurial experiment. Their version of CCA, Cornell Corrections, Wackenhut. Regular prison system is a nightmare, real and present danger to the public health. If they wanted to set up an operation to breed new strains of drug-resistant TB, they probably couldn't do a better job than their prisons are already doing. Some people think AIDS, in this country, in a few more years, will look like the Rlack Death, and the prisons aren't helping that either. So when one of Volkov's corporations decides to set up a test operation, where healthy, motivated prisoners can lead healthy, motivated lives, plus receive training and career direction, who's going to stand in the way?"

"That's where the footage is rendered?"