by Peter Watts
He could afford to wait, he told himself. The way things were going, he'd have all the excuse he needed before long. Not that he needed excuses any more, of course. Ken Lubin had been a free agent for years.
Play nice, he told himself. Play by the rules.
He did. He called the ambulance before he called the flamethrowers, stood guard until it floated in from the west, sprayed himself down and climbed back into the sky. He banked southeast, backtracking the vector's route. A lifter appeared in the middle distance and paced him for a while, cruising like a great dark cloud towards the target areas he'd pinpointed. Pilot lights sparked faintly at the tips of the long, incendiary muzzles hanging from its underbelly. Puffy pink and green clouds erupted intermittently in the airspace beneath it, cotton-candy litmus tests sniffing out infection.
He edged up the throttle. By now, Aaron's partner would be bagged and on her way. Taka Ouellette would be running tests on her by nightfall.
If Ouellette was running tests on anything, of course. Lubin had his doubts.
He remembered the first time he had met Achilles Desjardins. He had broken into the 'lawbreaker's home and caught him in flagrante delecto with a VR sensorium that served up wraparound scenarios of sexual torture. Desjardins would have never inflicted those impulses on the real world back then, of course, but a lot of things had changed in the meantime. Rules had changed. Leashes had been slipped. Official hierarchies had crumbled, leaving those who wielded power miraculously free of oversight.
Lubin had eavesdropped briefly on Desjardins's fantasy life before getting down to business. He'd gained some idea of that man's taste in women, as well as what he liked to do to them. And so five years later, when Taka Ouellette had climbed into the belly of a CSIRA helicopter, Lubin had watched with a dispassionate sense of finality.
Desjardins had promised her a role in the fight against Seppuku. He had evoked visions of bright gleaming laboratories normally reserved for bona-fide Meatzarts. The prospect had lit her up like a halogen floodlamp. One look and Lubin had known her secret desire, the desperate, unimagined hope of redemption for some past sin.
By now, it was easy enough to recognize.
He had been interested in whether the aircraft would head southwest, towards Boston. That was where the nearest research facilities would be. But instead it had disappeared to the north, and Lubin had not heard from Ouellette in the days since.
Not that he could have expected to, of course. Even if Desjardins had been telling the truth. And Lubin had to admit, with the logical clarity of an amoral mind, that it didn't make much difference either way. Taka Ouellette was not the caliber of scientist who'd last in the ring against any kind of heavyweight opponent. If she had been, they wouldn't have found her relegated to wildland patrol, handing out crumbs to the ferals. Her loss would matter not at all in the fight against Seppuku.
Achilles Desjardins, on the other hand, was vital. Whether he was also a sexual predator was irrelevant; he might well be instrumental in the saving of billions. Lubin couldn't think of many depravities that could not be overlooked in the pursuit of that higher goal. It was what the Greater Good was all about.
He almost felt envious.
Remedial Ed
Taka Ouellette was, in fact, within a research facility of some sort. She was not, however, playing the role of experimenter. Perhaps the man at her side had arrogated that role unto himself.
His appearance was unremarkable. Brown hair, uncombed, cut with a haphazard asymmetry as consistent with some faux-feral style as with outright incompetence. Thin squarish face. Not enough lines on the forehead, too many around the eyes. Large eyes, brown and wet, almost childlike. Nose slightly off-kilter. Baggy green sweatshirt, a TwenCen throwback with no animations.
She couldn't see below his waist. She was strapped to a medical gurney, flat on her back. If this disheveled r-selector was playing the researcher, it seemed that he'd reserved for her the role of experimental subject.
"Achilles Desjardins," he said. "Pleased to meet you, Alice."
The helicopter had dropped onto a rooftop pad somewhere north of the Great Lakes, well after midnight. She'd debarked and stepped unsuspectingly into a neuroinduction field that dropped her faster than a cervical dislocate. Faceless men in body condoms had brought her, conscious but paralyzed, into this quarantine cell. They had stripped her naked, catheterized her, and departed without speaking. Perhaps they'd been told she was some kind of fugitive or health risk. Perhaps they'd been in on the joke. She'd had no way of knowing, and no way to ask.
That had been a day ago, at least. Probably more. She had spent the time since isolated and immobilized, growing parched and ravenous by infinitesimal degrees.
The field was off now, though. Her motor nerves were back online. The only things holding her down were the nylon straps cinched painfully around wrists and ankles, waist and throat.
"There's been a mistake," she said quickly. "I'm not Alice, I'm Taka. Lenie and Ken's friend."
She wriggled against the restraints. Achilles smiled faintly.
"You're really not a very good biologist, Alice," he remarked, not unkindly. "I'm sorry, but it's true. You've had all kinds of clues, but you never quite put them together the right way." He sat on some unseen chair or stool next to the gurney. "If I hadn't stepped in you'd still be spreading Seppuku far and wide, killing your patients even faster than usual. No real scientist would make such basic mistakes."
"But I'm not—"
He put a finger to his lips, shushing her. He propped his elbows against the hard neoprene surface of the stretcher next to her head, rested chin in hands and looked down at her.
"Of course," he continued softly, "no real scientist would kill her own family, either."
So it wasn't a mistake. He knew exactly who she was.
She knew him, too. At least, she knew his type. He was soft. He was pathetic. Every day she faced down people who'd break his neck without breaking stride. On his own, without the props, he was nothing.
Except right.
She closed her eyes. Keep control. He's trying to scare you. Don't let him. Deny him the satisfaction.
It's a power game like all the others. If you aren't intimidated, you take some back.
She opened her eyes and looked calmly into his. "So what's the plan?"
"The plan." Achilles pursed his lips. "The plan is rehabilitation. I'm going to give you another chance. Think of it as a kind of remedial education." He stood. Something in his hand reflected the overhead lights, something small and shiny like a nail clipper. "We're talking a kind of carrot and stick scenario. I have this hobby that a lot of people would describe as, well, unpleasant. You'll find out how unpleasant, depending on how quick a study you turn out to be."
Taka swallowed. She didn't speak until she thought she could keep her voice level: "What's the carrot, then?"
Not quite.
"That was the carrot. My carrot, anyway. Your carrot is, you pass your orals and I let you go. Alive and everything." Achilles frowned, as if lost in thought. "Here's an easy one to start with. How does Seppuku reproduce? Sexually or asexually?"
Taka stared at him. "You're kidding."
He watched her a moment. Then, almost sadly, he shook his head.
"You went to the seminars, I see. They told you all our secrets. We prey on fear. Once we see you're not afraid, we'll pick on someone else. Maybe even let you go."
"You said—" she stopped, tried to control the tremor in her voice. "You said you'd let me go..."
He hadn't laid a hand on her and already she was begging.
"If you do well," Achilles reminded her gently. "But yes. I'll let you go. In fact, as a gesture of good faith, I'll let part of you go right now."
He reached out. The shiny thing in his hand pressed against her breast like a tiny icicle. Something snicked.
Pain bloomed across her chest, razor-sharp, like the cracks in glass before it shatters. Taka screamed, writhing in useless milli
meter increments against the straps.
The bloody gobbet of a nipple dropped against her cheek.
Darkness swirled around the edges of vision. At some impossible distant remove, way south of the pain at the center of the universe, a monster fingered its way between her labia.
"Two more where that came from," he remarked.
Decirculate
Clarke had learned a fair bit at Ouellette's side. She was no doctor, but she still had the rudimentary medical training she'd received as a rifter and the MI did most of the diagnostic and prescriptive work anyway. Miri's exorcism had cost them a few thousand patient records, half a year's downloaded updates, and all the vehicle's uplink capabilities—but whatever remained still knew enough to scan a body and prescribe basic treatments. Clarke wasn't up to dealing with much more sophistication than that anyway; even lobotomized, Miri was hardly the rate-limiting step.
People trickled through town, seeking Ouellette's ministrations but settling for Clarke's. She did what the machinery told her, played doctor as best she could. At night she'd sneak offshore and bypass Phocoena entirely, sleeping breathless and exposed on the bright, shallow bottom. Each morning she came ashore, stripped her diveskin down to the tunic and pulled Ouellette's borrowed clothing overtop. The strange dead fibers rubbed loosely against her limbs as she moved, an ill-fitting travesty full of folds and stitches. Removing the 'skin always felt a little like being flayed alive; this, this substitute might as well have been shed from the flanks of some great poorly-proportioned lizard. It wasn't too bad, though. It was getting easier.
It was pretty much the only thing that was getting easier.
The worst part wasn't her own medical ignorance, or the endless, rising count of those she couldn't save. It wasn't even the outbursts of violence that people sometimes directed at her when faced with their own death sentence, or with that of a loved one. She was almost grateful for the shouts and the fists, thrown too rarely to constitute any kind of real cost. She'd experienced far worse in her time, and Miri's weapons blister was always there when things got out of hand.
Much, much worse than the violence of those she didn't save was the gratitude of those she nearly could. The smiles on the faces of those for whom she'd bought a little time, too dulled by disease and malnutrition to ever question the economics of trading a quick death for a lingering one. The pathetic delight of some father who'd seen his daughter cured of encephalitis, not knowing or caring that Seppuku or the Witch or some rogue flamethrower would take her next month or next year, not thinking of the rapes and broken bones and chronic starvation that would stalk her in the days between. Hope seemed nowhere more abundant than in the faces of the hopeless; and it was all she could do to meet their eyes, and smile, and accept their thanks. And not tell them who it was that had brought all this down upon the world in the first place.
Her experiment with naked eyes was long since over. If the locals didn't like her affect, they could damn well go somewhere else.
She wanted desperately to talk to Taka. Most of the time she resisted the impulse, remembering: Ouellette's friendship had evaporated the instant she'd learned the truth. Clarke didn't blame her. It couldn't be easy, discovering you'd befriended a monster.
One night, lonely enough to gamble, she tried anyway. She used a channel that Desjardins had assigned for reporting any late-breaking Seppuku incidents; it got her to an automated dispatcher and thence to an actual human being who—despite his obvious disapproval over personal use of dedicated channels—patched her through to someone claiming to speak for a biological countermeasures lab out of Boston. He had never heard of Taka Ouellette. When Clarke asked if there might be other facilities she could check with, the man replied that there must be—but the goddamned Entropy Patrol never told them anything, and he wouldn't know where to point her.
She made do by indulging in false hopes. Lubin would catch his prey. Desjardins would honor the deal they had made. They would track down the threat to Atlantis, and disarm it. And Taka Ouellette, or others like her, would solve the mystery of Seppuku and stop it in its tracks.
Maybe then they could go home.
She didn't even recognize him at first.
He came staggering out of the woods on foot, limping, purple-skinned, his face a swollen mass of scabs and pulpy bruises. He wore a thermochrome windbreaker with one of the arms torn away, and he lurched into sight just as Clarke was about to shut down for the evening.
"Hi again," he said. A bubble of blood grew and popped at the corner of his mouth. "Miss me?"
"Holy shit." She hurried over and helped him towards the MI. "What happened to you?"
"'Nother r. A Big r. Fucking capital r. Took my bike." He shook his head; the gesture was stiff and clumsy, as if rigor mortis were already taking hold. "That other K around? Taka?"
"No. I'll look after you." She guided him to Miri's right mouth, took his weight as he sagged onto the extended tongue.
"You really a doctor?" The teenager managed to look skeptical through all the gore. "Not that I care," he added after a moment. "You can check me over any time."
Finally it sunk in: Miss me?
Clarke shook her head. "I'm sorry, but I've seen a lot of people lately. I don't know if I'd recognize you even without all the facework."
"Ricketts," the boy said.
She stepped back. "You brought—"
"I brought that stuff that's gonna kill ßehemoth," he said proudly through cracked and puffy lips.
You brought the stuff that's going to kill us all, she thought.
It shouldn't have been any kind of dilemma. Get him into the MI. Clean him up, fix the physical injuries, confirm the presence of any new predator eating him from the inside out.
Maybe he's clean. All the contaminated stuff was sealed up in that bag, maybe he never had direct contact—
Confirm Seppuku. Isolate the victim. Call for extraction.
Hope to God that if he's got it, he can't breathe it on me...
"Lie back. Get your feet up." She was at the rear panel almost before Ricketts had taken his feet off the ground. She stabbed the usual icon, heard the familiar hum as Miri swallowed. Clarke told the vehicle to close both mouths and run the standard diagnostic suite.
She left him in there while she sprayed herself down with disinfectant. Overkill, probably. Hopefully. She was wearing the requisite sterile gloves, and the 'skin of her tunic protected her under Ouellette's borrowed clothing—
Shit. The clothing.
She stripped it off and bagged it for incineration. The rest of her diveskin was in her backpack, stashed in the cab. The forsaken pieces, retrieved, wriggled back into place, seams sealing together into a comforting second skin. Diveskins weren't built with antipathogen properties explicitly in mind, but the copolymer dealt with salt ions as a matter of course; it had to keep out anything as large as a living cell.
When she got back to Miri's rear panel, the diagnostic cycle had finished. Rickets was suffering from a broken cheekbone, a hairline fracture of the left tibia, second-degree concussion, borderline malnutrition (better than average, these days), two impacted wisdom teeth, and a moderate roundworm infection. None of that was life-threatening; most of it could be fixed.
The diagnostic suite did not include a scan for Seppuku. Seppuku didn't exist in the standard database. Ouellette had cobbled together a hasty, separate subroutine in the wake of her discovery. It didn't do much—no helpful breakdown into first/second/end-stage categories, no list of associated macrosymptoms. No suggested course of treatment. Just a blood count, really. Clarke didn't even know how to interpret that simple number. Was there such a thing as a "safe" level for Seppuku?
Zero, she assumed. She tapped the icon to start the test. Ricketts twitched in the little spycam window as Miri drank a few more drops of his blood.
It would take a while to run the analysis. Clarke forced herself to focus on Ricketts's other problems in the meantime. The roundworms and the teeth could wait. T
argeted vasodilators and calcium suppressants eased the concussion. Broken bones were almost trivial: plant microcharge mesh into the affected areas to crank up osteoblast metabolism. Clarke had been doing that almost since the day she'd become a rifter.
"Hey!" Rickett's voice sounded tinny and startled through Miri's intercom. "I can't move!"
"It's the neuroinduction field," Clarke told him. "Don't worry about it. It just keeps you from jerking around during the cut-and-paste."
Beep.
And there it was. 106 particles per milliliter.
Oh Jesus.
How long had he been wandering around in the woods? How far had he spread it? The person who'd beaten him up: was he spreading it now, had he invited Seppuku in through the raw oozing skin of his knuckles? How many days before he discovered how much he'd really paid for a lousy motorbike?
Isolate the vector. Call in a lifter.
A lifter. It seemed so strange to even contemplate. She had to keep reminding herself: they're not monsters after all. They're not fire-breathing dragons sent down from the heavens to burn us out of existence. They're working for the good guys.
We're on their side now.
Still.
First things first. Ricketts had to be—
decirculated
—isolated until someone came by to collect him. Problem was, there weren't too many ways to do that. The MI would be useless for other field work as long as it kept him sequestered, and Clarke seriously doubted whether Freeport had had hot-zone isolation facilities even before it fell into ruin.
He can't stay here.
She watched the monitor for a few moments, watched Miri's jointed limbs and laser eyes putting Humpty together again. Then she called up the anesthesia menu. She chose isoflurane.