Living Memory by David Walton

Author:David Walton [Walton, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-10-17T16:00:00+00:00

Before he left, Everson insisted she tell no one about their conversation, not about the possibility of being read in to a secret compartment, nor even about the existence of such a thing.

She showed him to the door. “Isn’t this where you’re supposed to say, ‘I was never here?’”

“We take security very seriously,” he said, the smile gone. “I suggest you start to take it seriously, too. Not a word, not a breath of implication that you have anything to hide, not even to Bethany. Lie if you have to.”

The fact that he knew her sister’s name startled her, but then she remembered: they’d been investigating her. Of course they knew who she lived with. “She’s pretty good at noticing when I’m hiding something,” Samira said.

“I’m sure you can do it. You’re just upset about the fossils, that sort of thing. Improvise.”

She watched him go, wondering what she had just gotten herself into and already half-regretting it.

As it turned out, Bethany had her own news and wasn’t paying much attention to Samira’s mood. She rushed in, her face taut with distress.

“I just got a call from Gabby,” she said. “Her mother’s dead.”

“What? Elena?” Samira had only met her once in person, a towering figure in the field who knew more about mass extinctions than anyone else alive. She’d turned out to be as friendly and approachable a person as Samira had ever encountered, and had urged Samira and Beth to call her Elena instead of Dr. Benitez. Samira had corresponded with her occasionally for professional advice.

“What happened?”

“It was the Julian virus—that disease that’s raging through Argentina. Her whole team caught it, and every one of them died. It apparently happened over a week ago, but things are such a mess down there that they didn’t even get word to Gabby until today.”

“That’s awful.”

The media had started calling it the Julian virus, since it had started in Puerto San Julian, a small harbor town in southern Argentina. From what Samira had read, there was some question as to whether it was actually a virus at all, but it was clearly infectious, and spreading fast. Over two hundred people in Argentina were dead of the disease, and a handful in other countries. To make matters worse, the virus seemed to have an unprecedented ability to cross species lines, allowing animals to spread the contagion as well. One shop owner had described a man in his store suddenly vomiting blood and convulsing on the ground, and the media couldn’t stop talking about it. The CDC had issued travel warnings, and there was already talk of bans on travel to and from South America.

“Can Gabby even get home for a funeral?”

“No, that’s the thing,” Beth said. “She was calling to see if we could help.”

“Us?”

“Well, really to see if Mom and Dad could help.”

Samira and Beth’s parents were experts of a sort at finding creative ways to get into countries when the straightforward approach was blocked. They had helped numerous fellow missionaries get past

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