by B. V. Larson
Floramel’s eyes were downcast. “Hegemony would never allow it.”
“You’re probably right. Who’s this next guy? What was his name—?”
“Dr. He Jianskui is my name,” said the new hologram that had swum into view. He spoke with a Chinese accent. “Who wishes to consult with me?”
“I’m Floramel, Doctor. I’m a tech-smith. This man is my assistant.”
Jianskui looked her over, then me. He had a piercing stare.
“I’ve been mistreated,” he said. “I won’t help anyone until a new body is found for me.”
Floramel forced yet another smile. “We’re working on that, Doctor. In the meantime, perhaps you can help us.”
“I will not. You are my captors. You aren’t here to help anyone but yourselves.”
“But this case is related to your own.”
She told him then about the finger and the lack of a body-scan. Like Dr. Demikhov, he quickly became interested.
“Cloning,” he said. “It’s the only tool you have. You’ll have to grow a body from the DNA of the freshest, least damaged cell you have. Then, you’ll have to build up a slurry of stem cells to recreate a simulacrum.”
“A what?” I asked.
“A false life,” Jianskui explained, “a body that never existed before, but which has a basis in genetics. Excuse me, what is your medical specialty?”
The ghostly head was looking at me, and he didn’t look happy. Maybe he’d sensed my total incompetence.
“Uh… I’m sort of a specimen-gatherer.”
“I see. A field assistant?”
“That’s right.”
After giving me an up-down glance of disdain, he turned back to Floramel. “I have described the best medium for rapid growth and accelerated gene-transcription. It is in my archives.”
“Of course, Doctor. But could you go over all that again with me now—from memory?”
He looked almost as annoyed with her as he had with my lame ass a moment before. But finally, he was cajoled into cooperating. He gave Floramel a vomit-load of big words, which I didn’t follow at all. Most of it was chemical formulas and such-like. I soon grew bored and went back to poking at random tanks.
“I have it, James,” Floramel said a few minutes later. “I think we can do this, but we must talk to one more person.”
“Who’s that?”
“A man who’s done things like this recently. A man Central has been tracking closely for years—the Investigator.”
“Huh? The Investigator? He’s out on Dust World still, isn’t he? Don’t tell me Etta’s grandpa died, and you put his head in one of these tanks. She’ll be pissed.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “No, he’s still on Dust World. Could you… introduce us? Etta has always refused to do so in the past.”
“Uh… I guess so.”
We exited the spooky vault after that. I don’t mind telling you I was a glad to leave its long-dead, slimy occupants behind.
-13-
We spent the next hour or so stuffing Raash’s claw in a vacuum-sealed specimen jar. It was pretty cool—literally. It had its own refrigeration unit and dehumidifier built in.
With the remains secured as best we could, we headed to Dust World. These days such an interstellar trip wasn’t quite the ordeal it had been in the past. Rather than paying out your lifesavings for a ticket on a star transport, all you had to do was head for the right set of gateway posts.
Central had more than one Gray Deck—areas reserved for teleportation and the like. In one of them, they had set up permanent gateways that led to every planet under our direct protection. The posts and the power they used were expensive, but they were far cheaper than the fuel a starship sucked up when it went from one planet to another. All-in-all, gateways were a huge money-saver for Hegemony.
After a half-dozen hogs spent a solid hour trying to stop us, we managed to get approval to walk through the posts that were labeled Zeta Herculis. This shortcut took us straight to Dust World, landing us in the middle of a big square inside one of their largest cities. Correction: one of their largest towns. Dust World didn’t really have any habitations that could qualify as a true city.
There were a few hogs guarding the arrival spot. They startled badly when we arrived. Their guns were up and aimed at us, a full circle of four of them. They seemed more than jumpy.
“Oh good, you’re human,” said the head honcho hog. “What a relief. What can we do for you two?”
Frowning, Floramel and I both looked at him in confusion.
“Why wouldn’t we be human?” I asked. “This is the gateway to Earth, right?”
“It’s supposed to be. Just look at what walked out of those posts a few hours ago, over there in the pit.”
I walked over to the pit he’d indicated. It was sort of a garbage dump. Dust Worlders handled their refuse differently than we did on Earth. They tended to put it all into a big hole, sprinkle it with deadly flesh-eating nanites, then cover it over. Nature would then do its work, with a little help from technology.
What we saw in the bottom of that oozing, slimy pit was surprising. It could only be the corpse of giant space-squid.
“A Cephalopod? How did he get here?”
“We don’t know, Centurion. It just popped out of the gateway posts yesterday, and it came at us. We shot it down, as it wasn’t one of ours. It was a wild squid—a renegade.”
“We still have those? I thought all the squids were tame now.”
“Apparently not all of them got that memo.”
I couldn’t argue with him, and I was concerned.
Floramel came near and spoke to me softly. “Come on, James. Let’s get out of here. Take me to see the Investigator.”
“All right.”
Together, we crossed the dusty town into the dusty wilderness on the far side. Soon darkness fell. The town—like all human settlements on Dust World—was located deep inside a vast pit of its own. It was really a canyon more than a kilometer deep.
The open surface of the planet was too hot to survive on. For the most part, it was all one vast desert, but there were a few oasis spots like this one. They came in the form of sinkholes in the crust of the planet—a natural phenomenon which allowed cooler climates to exist at the gloomy bottom.
Sand from the endless, raging dust-storms above us often sifted down into these deep, wet holes, but the direct sunlight never made it down here. That was a very good thing, as the plants and animals below couldn’t afford to be hit by the fierce radiation of the local star. Everything and everyone down here would have been cooked alive. Fortunately, the tilt of the planet and the location of these valleys kept that from happening.
We walked all the way to the north wall of the valley and found an entrance carved into the stone. A glowing pair of lanterns hung there, marking the spot. We walked through and found a warren of tunnels and chambers inside.
Most of the stone-carved homes were empty now. The human population had once huddled inside these stone walls, desperate to hide from raiders like the dead squid we’d seen in the pit back in town. After that menace had been removed with Earth’s help, the inhabitants of Dust World had become braver. They’d moved out into the brighter, more cheery world of the valley floor.
But not the Investigator. I knew he was stuck in the old ways. He rarely came out to walk the valley, except maybe at midnight. He liked the natural quiet of his spider-hole, and he liked his solitude. Down here in the old abandoned shelters he had ample quantities of both.
“This place is spooky,” Floramel told me. “I can hardly believe Etta was born here.”
“Born and raised until she was about ten years of age,” I said with a hint of pride. “She’s a tough girl, I’ve always said it.”
Floramel glanced at me, but then she went back to examining various artifacts that had been discarded by people who had moved on long ago.
“There’s so much junk here… ancient technological equipment.”
> “Don’t scoff at it. The Dust World people were free to experiment with science and make discoveries for seventy years after Earth stopped advancing.”
“Yes. Earth was calcified in her development by the Galactics.”
“The Dust Worlders figured out how to manufacture nanites—all kinds of stuff.”
Floramel toyed with a metal box with wires hanging out of it. “Much of their work was deemed criminal until recently, much like the work of my people was.”
I thought about that and some of the things I’d seen the Investigator get up to down here. Earth didn’t know the half of it, and I hoped they never would.
Finally, we saw a wan light up ahead. It flickered out as we approached. Cast again into darkness, we lit our own personal lights up on our tappers, raising our arms high so we could see in the gloom.
“What was that?” Floramel asked me. “I got the impression someone ahead doused a light upon seeing us.”
“That’s very possible. The Dust World people… well, they aren’t always as friendly and kind-hearted as they might be.”
She gave me a strange look then slowed down. Soon, she was walking behind instead of beside me as we advanced deeper into the tunnels. That was a damned smart idea on her part, so I didn’t remark upon it.
When we reached the point where the lights had gone out, I lifted a hand to my cheek and called out loudly.
“Investigator! This is James McGill. I’m here to make a social call.”
For a few seconds, no one spoke. But then the light went on ahead of us again, shining from another dark cave entrance.
“That’s not the same spot that was lit before. James… I don’t like this place.”
“Don’t worry overly much. If he kills us, he’ll probably put us in line for a revive back on Earth.”
“We’re not even supposed to be on this world.”
I shrugged disinterestedly. That ship had sailed long ago. If the girl hadn’t wanted to get into any more trouble, she’d chosen the wrong man and the wrong planet to get involved with.
“Are you truly… McGill?”
That sonorous voice. It was interesting, almost haunting. There was a strong hint of madness in it, just as there had always been.
“That’s right, sir. I’ve come to pay my respects.”
The light shifted, and we realized that the lantern we’d seen as fixed to the wall wasn’t. A powerful, ropy arm held it up high. Had he truly held that heavy light aloft for several minutes, not moving a muscle? It was my impression that he had.
The Investigator was one of the strangest people I knew. He was Della’s father, and he was old. Just how old? Well… he was too old. When I’d last visited him during the Clone World campaign, he’d been experimenting with revival techniques of his own design. It was my impression that he was tinkering with rebirth and genetics in general.
I didn’t have any proof of this, except for the fact he looked more or less the same as he had around twenty five years ago. I didn’t mention any of this to Floramel, naturally. She’d just get freaked out by it all.
“There you are!” I said in a cheery tone, as if we were besties. “Hello, sir! It’s so good to see a family relation again.”
“You would call me a relative? Hardly, McGill. Here on Dust World no one is a kinsman unless they share genes.”
“Well… we share a kinsman then.”
“This is undeniable.”
It didn’t sound to me like he was overly happy to know I was the father of his granddaughter. That had been a sore point between us from the beginning, but I didn’t take offense. I probably wouldn’t choose a baby-daddy like me for Etta, either.
“Sir, can we talk to you about an important matter?” Floramel asked, speaking up for the first time.
The Investigator lifted the lantern higher and peered into her face. “A tech-smith. A twisted abomination, torn from our own genes by force. You profane this place, woman.”
“Hey now—” I began.
But Floramel raised a hand to stop me. She faced the Investigator with a flat stare of her own.
“We didn’t leave this colony by choice. We were taken away from our homes—and we no longer serve the Cephalopods.”
“No. You serve these idiot Earthers instead. It’s sometimes difficult to judge which of your masters has been more vile.”
“Jeez!” I interjected. “What’s bitten you, sir? Have you spent too many years down here stewing and licking your wounds? Etta and Della are both free of mind and spirit. They live among Earthers without a qualm. I can’t talk for Floramel, here, but she seems well-adjusted as well. Maybe you should take a trip to Old Earth, you might just learn something.”
The Investigator seemed to consider my words carefully, he usually did that. “Perhaps you’re right, McGill. I may have worked down here alone for too long, but I have my reasons. Come, I’ll show you something alarming.”
He turned and walked off into a tunnel. Floramel and I hesitated, but then we followed him. The trouble was that I knew this man meant business when he said something was “alarming.” That was code for “freaky,” or possibly something way worse than that.
I really should have suspected what I was going to find. The Investigator… well… I don’t like to speak ill of someone my own daughter was directly related to, but he wasn’t normal. In the head, I mean. Not by a longshot.
Bubbling tanks. That was the first hint we got. The second hint was a dank, swampy smell.
These tanks weren’t filled with water, and they weren’t nice and clean like the ones Floramel had showed me back under Central. Instead, they were filled with brackish liquids, almost mud.
There were eleven tanks in all. I counted them, because I wanted to be sure. They weren’t the same, either. Each had its own size and its own shape.
The biggest of them were shaped like a giant’s coffin. More narrow at the top and the bottom than they were in the middle. They were close to ten meters long.
Then there was the second row of tanks. These were broader, almost diamond-shaped. It was my impression these stank the worst, if I had to rank them, but I couldn’t swear to it.
The rest were rather small, man-sized down to tiny. The smallest of them was no bigger than a bucket you’d find in anyone’s barn.
Floramel walked between the tanks, eyeing the contents of each. I could tell she was stunned, as was I. But she didn’t freak out. She was, after all, a scientist.
That changed when we got to the smallest tank—the one that wasn’t much more than a bucket. Inside its murky depths was the body of a gremlin. It was the smallest of the creatures of Blood World. Floramel, for some incomprehensible reason, was sweet on these little imps. They were devils with high voices and horrible senses of humor, but she treated them like her own children—maybe because she didn’t have any.
She wiped away a tear as she gazed into that bucket at the floating lump of flesh. I caught that, but the Investigator didn’t.
He was enraptured by his own work. He talked animatedly about his long years of study, of recent mastery, of fascination and obsession.
“It all started with you, McGill,” he said. “I was working on a project of a similar nature when you last visited me. Do you remember?”
“What? Me? What’d I have to do with this particular stack of crimes against every known law of the Galactics and human decency?”
The Investigator turned with upraised eyebrows. “You dare to make an appeal to morality? Seriously? You’ve slaughtered innocent members of every species represented here. I’m recreating them, not destroying them. How can I be the monster?”
I shook my head and scratched at my neck. When confronted with abominations and quandaries, I sometimes got itchy.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, “but this is plain wrong. Are they even alive?”
“Of course they’re alive. They’re mindless, naturally… I’ve kept them in comas for years.”
Floramel released a p
uff of air. It was as if she’d been holding her breath for the last minute or three.
“What is the purpose of this… experimentation?”
“To learn, of course. Humanity has never duplicated the technology of the revival machines. I’ve sought to do so—but differently. Rather than using an elaborate flesh-printer, I’m attempting to regrow bodies using a more organic process.”
“Huh…” I said, looking them over. “Let’s see what we have here… The biggest tank—that’s a Wur Nexus, isn’t it? And the next in size is a human giant? Like the ones they grow out on Blood World?”
“Precisely. What do you think of my work, Floramel?”
“I hate them all,” she said, “but I’m intrigued. What made you start this work? You said it had something to do with McGill?”
The Investigator flicked his gaze my way, and I met his eyes. We’d never spoken of the day he’d revived me, after I’d fallen from the surface of Dust World down into this very canyon. He’d grown me back to life in one of these turd-tanks back then, and I didn’t like to think about it at all.
“Let’s just say that James needed to be reborn, and I helped him along.”
Floramel looked up sharply. She put her hand on the Investigator’s wrist.
I could have told her you didn’t just go around doing stuff like that, but the scary old man didn’t flinch or freak out. He smiled instead.
“I see the light of understanding in your eyes,” he said. “You’re fascination grows—like mine did years ago.”
Floramel bit her lip, then she asked a fateful question: “Have you ever grown a saurian?”
-14-
With an even wider smile, the Investigator led us to another chamber. Here, there were more aliens. There was a saurian, a Rigellian bear—even a Vulbite. He had collected them all.
“One thing, sir,” I said, “how did you gather all these bodies?”
He scoffed. “I didn’t gather them. I grew them.”
“Yeah, but… from what? You had to have a seed, or something.”
“Yes. Each of them was seeded from samples collected abroad. Dust World may be lightly inhabited, but we have resources. Our nanite production alone brings in a tidy sum of credits every month.”