Maelstrom

by Peter Watts

  Desjardins glanced at Rowan, alarmed. “He can hear us?”

  She answered Lubin instead. “You know her better than you think.”

  “You have—profiles,” Lubin said. His words were slurred; the induction field must be grazing his facial muscles. “That psychologist. Scanlon.”

  “Scanlon had his own issues,” Rowan said. “You and Clarke have a lot more in common. Similar outlooks, similar backgrounds. If you were in her shoes—”

  “I am in her shoes. I came here …” Lubin licked his lips. A trickle of saliva glistened at the corner of his mouth.

  “Fair enough. But suppose you had no information and no clearance, and no—behavioral constraints. What would you be after?”

  Lubin didn’t speak. His cowled face was an eyeless, high-contrast mask in the spots. His skin almost glowed.

  Rowan stepped forward. “Ken?”

  “’s easy,” he said at last. “Revenge.”

  “Against who, exactly?”

  “The—GA. We did try to kill us, after all.”

  Rowan’s contacts glowed with sudden input. “She was never seen near any GA offices.”

  “She ashaulted someone in Hongcouver.” A spasm ran up the length of Lubin’s body. His head lolled. “Looking for Yves Shcanlon.”

  “But Scanlon was her only lead, as far as we know. It didn’t go anywhere. We don’t think she’s even been in N’AmPac for months.”

  “She has other grudges,” Lubin said. “Maybe she’s—going home.”

  Rowan frowned, concentrating. “Her parents, you mean.”

  “She mentioned Sault Sainte Marie.”

  “Suppose she couldn’t get to her parents?”

  “Don’ know.”

  “What would you do?”

  “I’d—keep trying …”

  “Suppose her parents were dead,” Rowan suggested.

  “ … ’f we killed them for her?”

  “No, suppose they were already—suppose they’d been dead a long time.”

  Clumsily, Lubin shook his head. “The people she hates’re very mush … alive …”

  “Suppose, Ken.” Rowan was getting impatient. “Theoretical scenario. You’ve got a score to settle with the GA, and a score to settle with your parents, and you know you’ll never get to either of them. What do you do?”

  His mouth moved. Nothing came out.

  “Ken?”

  “—I redirect,” he said at last.

  “What do you mean?”

  Lubin jerked like a blind marionette with most of its strings cut.

  “The whole world fucked me over. I—I wanna return the favor.”

  “Huh.” Rowan shook her head. “She’s pretty much doing that already.”

  One crucifixion was enough, as it turned out. Achilles Desjardins was clean, if still vulnerable; the second surgery, prepped and waiting, had no interest in scouring his insides.

  It only wanted to change him into a flounder.

  Lubin’s little chamber of horrors had backed off for the moment. The pallet had folded itself into recliner mode: the assassin sat on it while a mechanical spider skittered across his body on legs like jointed whiskers.

  In the adjacent cube, Desjardins looked down at an identical device on his own body. He’d already been injected with a half dozen tailored viruses, each containing the code for a different suite of βehemoth-proof proteins. There’d be other injections over the next few days. Lots of them. The fever would start within a week; the nausea was already under way.

  The spider was taking baselines: bacteria from skin and hair, organ biopsies, gut contents. Every now and then it plunged a hair-thin proboscis into his flesh, provoking a diffuse ache from within the tissues. Reverse-engineering was a tricky business these days. If you weren’t careful, tweaked genes could change the microflora in the gut as easily as the flesh of the host. E. coli. could turn from commensal to cancer with the flip of a base pair. A few wily bacteria had even learned how to slip some of their own genes into viral carriers en route, and hence into human cells. It made Desjardins long for those good old-fashioned germs that merely fed on antibiotics.

  “You didn’t tell her,” Lubin said.

  Rowan had left them to their own devices. Desjardins looked at the other man through two layers of membrane and tried to ignore the creepy tickle on his skin.

  “Tell her what?” he asked finally.

  “That I took you off Guilt Trip.”

  “Yeah? What makes you so sure?”

  Lubin’s spider scrambled up his throat and tapped on his lower lip. The assassin obligingly opened his mouth; the little robot scraped at the inside of his cheek with one appendage and retreated back down the torso.

  “She wouldn’t have left us alone otherwise,” Lubin said.

  “I thought you were leashed, Horatio.”

  He shrugged. “One leash of many. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It sure the fuck does.”

  “Why? Do you really think I was so out of control before? Do you think I’d have even been able to unTrip you, if I honestly thought you’d breach?”

  “Sure, if you sealed it up afterward. Isn’t that your whole problem? You set yourself up to kill people?”

  “So I’m a monster.” Lubin settled back in the chair and closed his eyes. “What does that make you?”

  “Me?”

  “I saw what you were playing at when we first met.”

  Heat spilled across Desjardins’s face. “That’s fantasy. I’d never do that in real life. I don’t even fuck in real life.”

  Lubin opened one eye and assayed a trace of smile. “Don’t trust yourself?”

  “I’ve just got too much respect for women.”

  “Really? Seems a bit inconsistent with your choice of hobbies.”

  “That’s normal. That’s brainstem.” It had been such a relief to discover that at last, to see aggression and sex sharing the same hardwired pathways through the mammalian brain—to know his secret shame was a legacy millions of years old, ubiquitous for all the denial of civilized minds. But Lubin … “As if you don’t know. You get your rocks off every time you kill someone.”

  “Ah.” Lubin’s not-quite-smile didn’t change. “So I’m a monster, but you’re just a prisoner of your inner drives.”

  “I fantasize. You kill people. Sorry, you seal security breaches.”

  “Not always,” Lubin said.

  Desjardins looked away without answering. The spider ran down his leg.

  “Someone got away once,” said a strange soft voice behind him.

  He turned. Lubin was staring into space, not moving. Even his spider had paused, as if startled by some sudden change in its substrate.

  “She got away,” Lubin said again. He almost sounded as though he were talking to himself “I may have even let her.”

  Clarke, Desjardins realized.

  “She wasn’t really a breach then, of course. There was no way she’d ever make it out alive, there was no—but she did, somehow.”

  Lubin no longer wore the face of a passionless predator. There was something new looking out from behind those eyes, and it seemed almost … confused …

  “It’s a shame,” he said softly. “She really deserved a fighting chance …”

  “A lot of people seem to agree with you,” Desjardins said.

  Lubin mm’d.

  “Look.” Desjardins cleared his throat. “I need some of those derms before you go.”

  “Derms.” Lubin seemed strangely distant.

  “The analog. You said a week or ten days before the Trip kicked back in, and that was three days ago—if they spottest me in the next few days I’m screwed.”

  “Ah.” Lubin came back to earth. “That’s out of my hands now, I’m afraid. Horatio and all.”

  “What do you mean, it’s out of your hands? I just need a few derms, for Chrissake!”

  Lubin’s spider skittered off under the pallet, its regimen complete. The assassin grabbed his clot
hes and began dressing.

  “Well?” Desjardins said after a while.

  Lubin pulled on his shirt and stepped out of the cube. Its skin swirled in his wake.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, and didn’t look back.

  ANTHOPLEURA

  Mug Shot

  Exotics Infestation: Executive Summary (nontechnical)

  DO NOT mail

  DO NOT send through Haven

  DO NOT copy

  PURGE AFTER DECRYPT

  To: Rowan, PC

  Priority: Ultra (Global PanD)

  EID Code: βehemoth

  General Classification: nanobial/decomposer

  Taxonomy: Formal nomenclature awaiting declassified release to Linnean Society. Eventual outgroup clade to be at supraDomain level.

  Description: Unique heterotrophic nanobe, 200-250nm diameter. Opportunistic freeliver/rommensal. Genome I.IM (pRNA template): nonsense codons <0. 7% of total.

  Biogeography: Originally native to hydrothermal deep-sea environments; 14 relict populations confirmed (Fig. I). Can also exist symbiotically in intracellular environments with salinity ≤ 30ppt and/or temperatures ranging from 4-60°C. A secondary strain has been found with advanced adaptations for intracellular existence.

  Evolution/Ecology: βehemoth is the only organism known to have truly terrestrial origins, predating the Martian Panspermia event by approximately 800 million years. The existence of a secondary strain geared especially to the eukaryotic intracellular environment is reminiscent of the Precambrian serial endosymbiosis which gave rise to mitochondria and other modern subcellular organelles. Free-living βehemoth expends significant metabolic energy maintaining homeostasis in stressful hydrothermal environments. Intracellularly, infectious βehemoth produces an ATP surplus which can be utilized by the host cell. This results in abnormal growth and giantism among certain deep-water fish; it confers increases in stamina and strength to infected humans in the short term, although these benefits are massively outweighed by disruption of short-chain sulfur-containing proteins and consequent deficiency syndromes (see below).

  Notable Histological & Genetic Features: No phospholipid membranes: body wall consists of accreted mineralized sulfur/phosphate compounds. Genetic template based upon Pyranosal RNA (Fig 2); also used for catalysis of metabolic reactions. Resistant to g-radiation (I megarad not effective). The βehemoth genome contains Blachford genes analagous to the metamutators of Pseudomonas; these allow it to dynamically increase mutation rate in response to environmental change and are probably responsible for its ability to fool steroid receptors on the host cell membrane.

  Modes of Attack: Freed from the rigors of the hydrothermal environment, free-living βehemoth assimilates several inorganic nutrients 26-84% more efficiently than its closest terrestrial competitors (Table I). This is especially problematic when dealing with sulfur. In a free-living state, βehemoth is theoretically capable of bottlenecking even that extremely common element; this is the primary ecological threat. βehemoth is, however, more comfortable within the bodies of homeothermic vertebrates, which provide warm, stable, and nutrient-rich environments reminiscent of the primordial soup. βehemoth enters the cell via receptor-mediated endocytosis; once inside it breaks down the phagosomal membrane prior to lysis, using a 532-amino listeriolysin analog. βehemoth then competes with the host cell for nutrients. Host death can occur from any of several dozen proximal causes including renal/hepatic failure, erythromytosis, CNS disorders, blood poisoning, and opportunistic infections. Vertebrate hosts serve as reservoirs which periodically reinoculate the nanobe into the external environment, increasing the chance of self-sustaining outbreaks.

  Diagnostics: Methionine labeling is effective in culture. Free-living βehemoth in concentrations of greater than 1.35 billion/cc exerts detectable effects on soil pH, conductivity, porphyrin counts, and chlorophylls A and B (Table 2); the extent of these effects varies with baseline conditions. βehemoth can be inferred in asymptomatic patients by the presence of d-cysteine and d-cystine in the bloodb (unsuccessful attempts to cleave bound sulfur sometimes stereoisomerizes the molecule).

  Present Status: See Figure 3. 4,800km2 sterilized at last report. 426,000km2 under immediate threat.

  Ecological Trajectory: If current trends continue, present models suggest long-term competitive exclusion of all competing life-forms between 62°N and S latitudes, due to monopolization and transformation of nutrient base. Ultimate fate of polar components unknown at this time. Sensitivity analysis generates 95% confidence limits of 50 to 94 years for EL90.

  Recommendations: Continue ongoing efforts to alter present trajectory. Allocate Fallback Options budget as follows.

  1. Orbital: 25%

  2. Cheyenne: 5%

  3. M.A. Ridge: 50%

  4. Metamorph: 20%

  Anemone

  She’d become a scavenger in her own home.

  Sou-Hon Perreault virtually lived in her office now. It held everything of importance. A window on the world. A purpose. A sanctuary.

  She still had to eat, though, and use the toilet. Once or twice a day she’d venture from her cave and see to life’s necessities. Most of the time she didn’t have to deal with Martin; his contracts took him into the field more often than not.

  But now—oh God, why now of all times?—he was in the living room when she came back.

  He was digging around in the aquarium, his back turned. She almost got past.

  “The male died,” he said.

  “What?”

  He turned to face her. A damselfish, pale and stiff, weighted the dip net in his hand. One milky eye stared blindly through the mesh.

  “He looks like he’s been dead for a while,” Martin said.

  She looked past him to the aquarium. Brown algae filmed the glass. Inside, the glorious anemone was shrunken and frayed; its tentacles twitched feebly in the current.

  “Jesus, Marty. You couldn’t even be bothered to clean the tank?”

  “I just got home. I’ve been in Fairbanks for the past two weeks.”

  She’d forgotten.

  “Sou, the prescriptions aren’t working. I really think we should consider wiring you up with a therapist.”

  “I’m fine,” she said automatically.

  “You’re not fine. I’ve looked into it already, we can afford it. It’ll be available around the clock, whenever you need it.”

  “I don’t trust therapists.”

  “Sou, it’d be a part of you. It already is, in a way, they just haven’t—isolated it yet. And it runs pathways right to your temporal lobe, so you can talk to it as easily as you can talk to anyone.”

  “You want to cut out a part of my brain.”

  “No, Sou, just rewire it. Did you know the brain can support over a hundred fully sentient personalities? It doesn’t affect sensory or motor performance at all. This would just be one, and it’d take up such a small amount of space—”

  “My husband, the walking brochure.”

  “Sou—”

  “It’s multiple personality disorder, Martin. I don’t care what cute name they give it these days, and I don’t care how many of our friends live happy fulfilling lives because they hear voices in their heads. It’s sick.”

  “Sou, please. I love you. I’m only trying to help.”

  “Then get out of my way.”

  She ran for shelter.

  Sou-Hon. Are you there?

  “Yes.”

  Good. Stand by.

  Static. A brief spiderweb of connections and intercepts, orange filaments proliferating across a continent. Then no visual front and center, darkness everywhere else.

  Go ahead.

  “Lenie?” Perreault said.

  “So. I wondered when they’d get around to this.”

  “Get around to what?”

  “Hijacking my visor. Sou-Hon, right?”

  “Right.”

  “They got that right, at least.”

  Perreault took a grateful
breath. “You okay?”

  “I got out. Thanks partly to you, I guess. That was you in the ’fly, wasn’t it? At Yankton?”

  “That was me.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank—”

  A damselfish flashed across Perreault’s mind, safe in a nest of stinging tentacles.

  “ … anemone,” she finished softly.

  Silence on the line. Then: “Thank an enemy. That makes a lot of sense.”

  Perreault shook her head. “Sea anemone. It’s this undersea ambush predator, it eats fish but sometimes—”

  “I know what a sea anemone is, Suze. So what?”

  “Everything’s been perverted, somehow. The ’flies, the matchmakers—the whole system’s done a 180, it’s protecting the very thing it was supposed to attack. You see?”

  “Not really. But I was never that big on metaphors.” A soft laugh. “I still can’t get used to being a starfish.”

  Perreault wondered but didn’t ask.

  “This anemone of yours,” Clarke said. “It kicks ass. It’s powerful.”

  “Yes.”

  “So why is it so fucking stupid?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It doesn’t seem to have any kind of focus, you know? I saw the threads—it described me a thousand different ways and then it just went with the one that stuck. I don’t know how many headcases it threw at me, through my watch, my visor—they even started coming at me out of vending machines, did you know that?—and it wasn’t until I stopped talking to anyone else that it settled on you. Any haploid would’ve known better than to audition most of those assholes, but your anemone is just—random. Why is that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Didn’t you ever wonder?”

  She had, of course. But somehow it hadn’t seemed to matter that much.

  “Maybe that’s why you made the cut,” Clarke said.

  “Why?”

  “You’re a good soldier. You need a cause, you follow orders, you don’t ask embarrassing questions.” A whisper of static. Then: “Why are you helping me, Sou? You’ve seen the threads.”