Vitals

by Greg Bear

  “Sir, with all respect, we will—”

  “Just go!” Breaker shouted, and Delbarco moved up to lend her sandpaper stare.

  The Coast Guard officers reluctantly broke away. The Marines stayed.

  “Should I leave, too?” Mrs. Holloway inquired hopefully.

  “Hospital,” Delbarco insisted, taking her by the elbow.

  It did not matter how often we had studied the charts and maps—within ten minutes we were lost. The ship’s decks were a labyrinth of staggered passageways, promenades, galleries, multilevel ventilation shafts, sitting rooms, lounges, bars, restaurants, shops—all in different degrees of finish. We ascended one long escalator inboard and stared up at a huge stained-glass skylight. Turned left in the atrium, spun around to another escalator . . .

  Mrs. Holloway began to look pale.

  Came out on the starboard promenade, looking along a row of doors opening into empty condos.

  We were not where we wanted to be.

  Barricades of equipment and construction materials had left Mrs. Holloway as confused as the rest of us. After half an hour of twists and turns and doubling back, only to arrive at where we had been earlier, she started crying. “They haven’t posted the deck signs yet. We’re going too fast,” she said. “I want to know, please, are we in danger? I can’t help you now. We’re out of my area.”

  Ben and Delbarco walked in lockstep to the nearest wide port. Delbarco raised her rifle and fired a burst. The safety glass erupted in a million flying jewels. Mrs. Holloway cringed and covered her eyes.

  Ben leaned through and looked up, sideways, down. “That way,” he concluded, and pointed at a forty-five-degree angle. Delbarco agreed.

  We approached a ribbed-steel fire door blocking a broad walkway. “What’s that smell?” a Marine asked, lifting his nose. Something did indeed smell rich and foul.

  “The alarm has been turned off,” Mrs. Holloway said. “This door should be open.” She took a key from her wrist bag and inserted it into a red box. The door obediently slid aside. Fluid slopped and spilled across the deck.

  We drew back, repelled by an unbelievable stench, like ten thousand rotting skunks. A flow of puslike liquid, pink and green and filled with congealed yellow streamers, pooled at our feet.

  Mrs. Holloway dissolved in hysterics.

  “Let her go,” Delbarco said. Breaker took Mrs. Holloway by the shoulders and pointed her aft. She ran off in quick jerking steps, lifting her gown to free her legs and not looking back.

  “Tell us what this is,” Breaker asked Candle and Carson.

  “Looks like, smells like, contaminated fluid,” Carson said.

  Breaker gave him a disappointed sneer. They turned to me.

  “It’s a culture,” I said. I pointed to a strand of slime hanging from a sprinkler head. “Someone connected a vat to the fire control sprinklers.”

  That explained the grease fire, the thin ribbon of smoke; the emergency water flow had been deliberately triggered, and not by our teams.

  Breaker closed his eyes. “No suits.”

  Delbarco asked, “Aren’t we immunized?”

  “Someone had loose lips,” Ben said. “What do you want to bet Golokhov is trying something new?”

  Four of the Marines started coughing, waved their hands, coughing harder, excused themselves, then doubled over and fell to their knees. Through their gasps, I saw they were smiling; coughs were giving way to laughter.

  Two others shook their heads and unslung their rifles, holding them out as if to keep them clean should they throw up.

  Candle looked ready to turn to stone. Carson backed away from the troops, pushing the safety off his pistol.

  “Hysteria,” Delbarco said in disbelief. “There’s nothing here!”

  “Aerosol,” I said. “There could be a mist in the air throughout the ship. Bacteria, phages . . . We’ve been breathing it for some time now. Right into our lungs.”

  Delbarco looked as if she had just been kicked in the stomach. “Goddammit,” she said. She raised her rifle again. “Get up off your knees. We need to move forward.”

  Breaker put his hand on the barrel. She jerked it aside and glared at him.

  “Fuck it,” Breaker said.

  “Let’s go,” Ben whispered to me. “We don’t want to be here.” He took me by the arm and we walked away. One of the prone Marines looked up, saw our departure, and reached for his rifle.

  “Ma’am,” he said.

  Delbarco ignored him. She had locked eyes with Breaker.

  “We are being influenced,” Breaker said. “We have no choice but to head back to the boat.”

  “I do not agree,” Delbarco said.

  “I am in command.”

  “And I will not abandon this mission because of a bucket of pus, Goddammit!”

  “Move it,” Ben ordered me under his breath.

  “Put down your weapon, Agent Delbarco,” Breaker ordered.

  “The entire country is in jeopardy here!”

  “Put down your gun.”

  I looked over my shoulder. Breaker had a reasonable, even a pleasant look on his face. He held out his hand, cleared his throat.

  Delbarco opened fire. Breaker slammed back against a bulkhead and bullets whinged and sighed around the deck. One of the ricochets took a Marine in the nose. He bent backwards and his weapon discharged. I felt the wind as a round buzzed past my ear.

  Ben had been right. Trying to take Lemuria and confront Maxim Golokhov was indeed like squeezing a giant zit. We had not progressed as far as we had hoped with our elixir. But then, Ben had known, I suppose I had known; anyone could have guessed. Golokhov had been studying his microbes for over seventy years.

  We ran to the escalator and took the moving steps three at a time.

  Ben and I split up when we encountered a group of four Marines, all sporting blue armbands, using light fixtures for target practice.

  “Chickenshit!” one of them shouted. Ben went right, down a corridor, and I took a narrow stairwell.

  I’m working to remember in some linear sequence what happened on board Lemuria in the next few hours. I’d like to tell the truth, but even at the time, truth was a rare commodity, all too easily squandered. I was better off than some I saw, but in fifteen or twenty minutes, I was sweating like a glass of ice water in a swamp. At my heart I felt glacial, but my skin was hot and damp, and my breath smelled—so I thought—like the fumes off a bucket of hot tar.

  I felt happy enough, but not so happy I could laugh at my condition.

  At first I wasn’t afraid. I had a kind of wanderlust. I was like an ant hosting a parasite, looking for my bird. I just didn’t know what my bird looked like.

  I did know that a troop of Marines, their uniforms soaked and stinking, mingling with kitchen crew in chef’s caps and goop-stained whites, was not my bird. They were to be avoided. They were happily shooting up a huge hanging sculpture in a high-ceilinged bar area, dodging the long, falling glass stilettos.

  Red and green and blue shards covered the oak dance floor. One Marine had not dodged fast enough. A long blue knife of glass had entered his upper thigh and pinned him to the wood. He looked down in dismay at his predicament, then laughed with the rest of them, twisting in hobbled jerks, straining at the flesh of his calf like a closely staked dog. “Anyone want to bet how long before it breaks?” he called out.

  Gunfire and happy shouting rose from a tropical garden below another skylight. Marines and Coast Guard had taken sides and were using each other for target practice. Points were being awarded, and even as I listened, bursts of rifle fire reduced the number of voices. Best to avoid that area entirely. I pushed forward and across the ship to the starboard side of A deck, I think.

  I made my way down a carpeted passageway with granite walls studded with gold fasteners. It was beautiful, but my head was clearing and I felt a little anxious. I was thinking about piecework and chopper and regulus. Perhaps my brother had not been as good as everyone had thought, Li
ssa included. Maybe these alterations had unwittingly primed us for the defenses on Lemuria.

  Or perhaps he had known that they would protect me, with my gene modifications . . . but would not protect the others.

  I came out on a balcony (I hadn’t the foggiest idea what the nautical term was) pushing out below a huge jutting wing that I presumed was part of the bridge. That positioned me just forward of Aristos.

  The balcony overlooked the starboard side of the bow, a long sloping hill spaced with lines of windows, gleaming like a knife blade against the gray sea. God, it was getting late. The eastern sky was dark, and the western was suffused with the last of a flaming sunset. How time had darted and distorted. I stood there for a while, enjoying the fresh air, then decided I would not try to escape. I would find Goncourt’s hospital for myself.

  I did have a few questions to ask of the Master. I would deliver my respects in person, then surrender. History had won. That was it, really, in a nutshell. Maxim Golokhov was the twentieth century. He was my history. And he had definitely won this war, a war I had never wanted to fight in the first place.

  Just as I turned to go back inside, I heard a rapid succession of cracks, like popcorn in a steel drum. I looked aft and saw several columns of smoke, black and worried by sea breezes, rising from the starboard side. Another puff joined them, and more cracks. They might have been unchambered rounds going off in a bag of clips, some Marine’s body cooking. Or firecrackers. I wasn’t a soldier, and I did not want to know.

  I encountered Ben standing by himself near a bank of pay phones. He was just hanging up, rubbing his chin’s stubble and smiling like a kid with a full sack of chocolate bars. He looked surprised to see me.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He puzzled for a moment. “I thought we’d made our farewells.”

  “Not formally,” I said.

  He had tucked his pistol in his waistband. He took it out, and I backed away. He put on a simple, concerned face. “No worries,” he said reassuringly, and handed it to me like a gift. “I’ve thought it over and you’d better take this,” he said. “Janie will be here any minute and she doesn’t like guns.”

  I took the pistol. Relieved, he raised his arms and did a slow, ecstatic jig. “It’s been so goddamned long, I miss her so much. I don’t care how long it takes, I’ll wait for her.”

  “I think you should come with me,” I said. “Think hard, Ben.” I tried to be gentle. Ben had been a pillar in this muck and confusion, and now they had reduced him to a hopeful child. “Is Janie really coming?”

  He didn’t seem to hear me. He did another turn and smiled.

  “Ben?”

  “Go away. I’ll be fine.”

  “Right,” I said. For the moment at least, Golokhov would make him happier than I ever could. “I’ll give you two some privacy.”

  “Yeah, thanks, bud. When she gets here, we’ll need it, we certainly will. I’ll introduce you later.” He clapped his big hand on my arm. “And make sure to say good-bye to Prince Hal. Janie would have liked him, too.”

  “Will do,” I said, and walked off with all due speed.

  Even my tears stung and stank of creosote.

  I did not trust myself with Ben’s gun or any other. I threw his pistol over the rail into the ocean, along with my own. Getting rid of them made me feel a lot less apprehensive. At least I would not be compelled to put on a wide grin, happy as a clam at high tide, and blow my own brains out.

  I started climbing the emergency stairs. The safety doors had been hammered open on seven decks. The helicopter teams had made it that far before succumbing. On what I guessed was the ninth or tenth floor, I found a brass plaque propped against a bulkhead, waiting to be bolted at eye level. I bent over to examine the plaque. It showed the plan of the tenth floor of Aristos Tower. I traced my finger along the etched lines: Olympic-sized pool, left, a small pressroom for circus interviews, right, a gymnasium and physical-therapy clinic. Most of the spaces on the plaque had been enameled in shiny black: no public access.

  I mused that the Lemuria was probably the closest thing I would ever experience to Montoya’s starship, hauling rich immortals across the universe. Clean (at least when finished and mopped up) and well lighted, smelling of plastics and paint and filtered air, spanking white sheets rolling across acres of California king-size beds, beautiful women sprawling before ageless studs, forever young, willing and fertile, and outside, terrific views of the Horsehead Nebula and Orion’s Belt. Each planet a challenge, every day an adventure.

  “Is that what I’m after?” I asked myself. “Forgiveness and a few bits of charity from the Master?”

  Gloom descended, and I had no way of knowing whether it was genuine or a bacterially induced fake. “Travel to the stars. Fill the universe with human flesh. White human flesh. White-boy dreams, Imperial destiny. All clean and healthy and Spin and Marty and . . . shit.”

  I heard voices. I wasn’t alone. I looked around the corner, tripped over a gap in the tile, and stumbled into the open.

  In the corridor beyond, three stewards and a Coast Guard enlisted man were going through the pockets of a body. They rolled it over, swearing monotonously under their breaths. Beyond them, five big guys in business suits caromed down the hall like drunks, but their eyes were steady and predatory. The enlisted man and one steward saw them coming, spun about to abandon their catch, and noticed me. They hunched and didn’t even signal each other, but as a team brandished a pistol and a fancy hunting rifle covered with scrollwork. The enlisted man got off a round before I could do anything more than flinch. The shot creased my cheek. I shouted and turned, somehow ended up on my hands and knees, and picked myself off the deck. Another slug went through my pant leg. I ran, skidding on tile as I rounded the corner.

  Adrenaline cleared my head like a blast of stinging cold water. Screw the Long Haul. I wanted to live another few seconds, please God, please Mother. I hid in a fire-station alcove, shivering, until I heard someone coming, then burst from my cover like a stupid pheasant. The steward, less than ten yards away, had aimed his rifle in anticipation, but before he could fire again, I was through a passageway feed, into the opposite spaces.

  Somehow, I had ended up back by the unmounted brass plaque. I touched my cheek, brought my fingers away bloody, and looked into the corridor where I had seen the hunters and their kill. The body remained, its face a red mass. It had been joined by two others. I picked up the plaque to use as a weapon, or a shield, and studied the engraved map. Left. I was sure of it; the hospital was on this floor and inboard, to my left.

  The first heavy door to the private spaces was intact and locked. I shivered at the sound of voices, a rifle butt rhythmically tapping the walls. A painful crack and ricochet.

  I took Tammy’s papers from my pocket, read them quickly, punched in an entry code, and waited for the little LED to flash red, red, no luck. I was sure that would happen, and I would be dead soon.

  It flashed red. I tried another number. The voices were in the passageway.

  “Did you see that bastard go down? Christ, got him right through the spine.”

  “Better than paintballs.”

  “Yeah, more splash.”

  Laughter. Two guys out in the woods, hunting for me and whatever else they could flush from cover.

  Red, red.

  I lifted the paper to my eyes, studied the blurry copy of Tammy’s diagram. This was a rear door, I guessed, used by staff in the medical center. I found the door on her crude map and tried to make out the combination. She had been writing with her left hand. The scrawl of fourteen numbers was hard to understand, but I took a guess and punched it in, the buttons clicking into place above each integer. The buttons popped out on the tenth number. Confused, I angrily slapped the frame, then punched in four more.

  “Whoops! Gotcha,” someone called with ringing cheer.

  The light flashed green.

  I fumbled the handle. Grabbed it again. Something snicked and clacked behind me:
well-oiled gunmetal. The door was heavy and opened slowly.

  I pushed through the gap. Saw at the end of the short hall a white steward’s jacket and a pasty damp face with a five o’clock shadow, glint of ornately decorated rifle swinging down.

  Click.

  “Ah, fuck. Wait up, stupid!”

  A hand clutching a pistol poked around the corner and fired. The slug caught me in my side, glanced off the bulletproof vest over my ribs, blasted paint and metal from the bulkhead, and shoved me like a bully’s big hard fist through the door.

  I tugged the door shut and pushed the lock home, then jerked at the pound of a rifle butt. In one frantic turn, as I stood away from the door, I saw what could have been a gray-carpeted hallway in any well-funded modern hospital or university building: closed office doors, cork bulletin boards (still virginal and bare) mounted on freshly painted beige walls, and at the end, a sitting or waiting room with two utilitarian blue couches, two red chairs, a table, and a wall-spanning mural.

  I caught my breath. Touched the vest through the hole in my jacket, felt the compressed groove beneath the fabric, poked my finger through the exit hole.

  One one thousand, two one thousand, three . . .

  Inspected the pattern of gray-and-black marks on the back of my sleeve, from the bullet’s near impact and the spray of paint chips.

  Five one thousand, six one thousand, seven . . .

  Lifted my calf to inspect the hole in my pants.

  “Fucking amateur,” I said, and giggled harshly.

  Nothing outside.

  Then, against the door, five staccato bangs, loud as horse kicks—bullets. They were trying to shoot through the door. No marks on the inside, not even a reverse dimple. Thick and armored. The back of my head hurt. I had slammed it back against the wall in surprise.

  Another thump on the door, soft and frustrated.

  Eight one thousand, nine.

  The room was silent but for the ticking of a clock on the wall. I stood with my back to the wall for several minutes, listening, waiting for my heart to slow, and that was all I heard. My heart, and the soft ticking of the big clock. Time passing. I couldn’t believe I was still alive. I could feel the pain in my cheek like a small, hot brand.