“Two months?” Kessler asked. “Nobody in or out?” His eyes were wide open in his slack face. His lips quivered as if he might cry.
Another wave of anxiety and claustrophobia washed over Chelsea , but again the rat counteracted it.
Chelsea leaned down, pinching Kessler’s ear between her thumb and first knuckle and pulling him toward her.
“Two months, MA’AM,” she whispered. Then her whisper became a growl. “Nobody in or out, MA’AM.”
Kessler looked slightly green, the tinge Golden people took on when they were nauseated. Everything she’d announced had been discussed from the earliest planning stages of their projects. This was merely a change in timing. What was the matter with him?
The Rat God in her lab coat pocket wriggled as if it too found Kessler’s behavior disturbing. Chelsea sent feelings of love and respect toward it and was rewarded with an additional trickle of its intoxicating bliss.
“Each building is equipped so that the entire staff, plus the installed interconnected brains of the Trust, may survive indefinitely inside, in case of any new bioterrorist attacks,” she said. “As long as the structure can move itself from one place to another for occasional replenishment of key components that can’t be manufactured onboard, the building’s synthesizers are capable of meeting the nutritional and medical needs of their populations for as long as may be required. You have nothing to fear.”
“Of course, ma’am,” Kessler said. Keiko sat with her typical blank but blissful expression, waiting for a command from either of her two handlers. It was a pity that Kessler himself lacked the serenity and discipline he’d caused to blossom in Keiko. “But this wasn’t supposed to happen yet, not for half a year, ma’am.” His voice shook. Chelsea watched a tear roll down his cheek and she realized his entire body was quaking.
Two months locked inside!
Paranoia, claustrophobia, and dread locked every muscle as if she’d been flash frozen. A warm current from the rat loosened her enough to be able to speak again.
“It’s necessary to do a live test of the facilities,” she said. “To work out any issues that might arise. These structures involve fantastically complex biotechnology, you know. They have more in common with living creatures than they do with traditional buildings. Just having the Brain Trust coordinate the moving limbs would have been impossible a decade ago. With practice, the human teams operating the structure will be able to work together well enough for the building to almost seem alive.
“Are you all right, Dr. Kessler? You seem quite disturbed.”
“I’m…I’m fine, ma’am.” His Golden face still had a whitish green tinge. “This is a bit of a surprise, that’s all. We won’t all be working sealed inside, will we? Ma’am? There will still be ambulatory workers who come and go?”
Kessler was truly not coping well, and his nervousness and trepidation were making her own new and dreadful anxieties start to spike again.
“Dr. Kessler, God has chosen you for this work. How can you balk at such a calling?” She narrowed her eyes. “How did you do on the Sub Test? I’m not sure I received your scores.”
They had all been required to take the Sub Test; a battery of questions and personality measures that had evolved from the ones used generations ago to find sailors who were mentally prepared for life aboard submarines. Chelsea had gotten nearly a perfect score and she knew Keiko had, too.
His voice was quiet. “I haven’t taken it yet, ma’am.”
“It was a companywide order!”
“Yes, and I will certainly comply, ma’am. I just haven’t done it yet. I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“That’s unacceptable, Dr. Kessler. I’m adjourning this meeting. Go and take the test right now. I want a copy of your results sent to me no later than this time tomorrow. Is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Inside Chalk Bar
“Which one?” IAi547 asked.
“Here, sir,” his subordinate said, gesturing.
IAi547 stood at the private table that Organization intelligence said his former friend, Sett, heir to Williams Gypsum, had kept reserved for himself. There was half a bottle of liquor on the table, still cold, covered with condensation droplets. 547 had hoped to overwhelm his quarry fast enough to preempt any escape, but Sett had managed to get away, and now he was out there attacking with his own team from vehicles. To complicate matters further, Fiends had appeared out of nowhere in still unknown numbers. Sett’s company should have had enough firepower to prevent this kind of Fiend infestation in his district, but here they were. Maybe the Williams dynasty was weaker than 547 had thought.
On the back of a chair hung a torn and faded jacket. It wouldn’t fit an Unnamed, so it must have been left by Sett’s friend, the one intel had identified as the Zone Poisoner. 547’s glasses confirmed the absence of bombs or other traps, so he searched the pockets, finding an old spiral-bound paper notebook, partly burned. He dropped it into his own jacket pocket, in case it held some clues about what Sett’s next move would be.
“We’ve got to fight our way back across the border into SLiD 9,” he said to 317, another Unnamed on his team. “Let’s make sure this place burns to the ground as we do.”
“Yes, sir.”
The clinic
It was the third straight day of machine gun fire outside. The Saved, somehow suddenly equipped with horrifying Federal weapons, had launched a full-scale assault to retake the clinic. Occasionally stray shots broke through the front window, leaving thumb-sized holes. Wanda moved from bed to bed, tending the patients the way she always had. She saw no reason to hide from the bullets. Regardless of who won this particular battle, Wanda knew she would be a slave in this place until the day she died. If that happened to be today, so much the better.
She wondered whether Dok had survived his underground mission. He’d been sure he wouldn’t. He certainly hadn’t returned here.
Wondering about Dok was less painful than wondering about Nami or fretting about Ernesto. Dok was her friend and she hoped he was okay, but she hadn’t assumed responsibility for keeping him safe the way she’d done with the kids.
Outside the front window, orange flashes and blurs indicated Fiends moving around in the twilight, always backwards, retreating from the shrieking Federal machine guns. Suddenly a Fiend appeared facing the glass, pointing his weapon inside. Wanda had no impulse to run or to dive for the ground, even as he emptied a clip through the glass before running off again. Wanda wasn’t hit, but Piyumi and Judee were now lying silently on the floor. She expected the Fiend to come charging in, but he hesitated, looked back over his shoulder and bolted.
More Federal weapons erupted outside, with increasing frequency.
Wanda was still staring at the window when Porter appeared, stepping through the open hole where one of the Zone’s last pieces of plate glass had stood moments before. He walked to the center of the room and pointed his Federal handgun at the patient in the far corner. Sweeping it rapidly sideways as he fired, he wiped out every last patient in the place, more than twenty in all. The action took him no more than a few seconds. Wanda’s ears rang and her whole body seemed to reverberate from the noise, even after he stopped shooting and approached her, glancing down at the collapsed women as he stepped over them.
“Where’s Sula?” he asked.
“The Fiends didn’t trust her,” Wanda said. “She’d obviously been well rewarded by you, and she never convinced them that she fully accepted their authority. So, they slit her throat.”
Outside there were more Saved going past. The shots were coming less frequently.
“This clinic is now Saved property,” Porter said. “Looks like you’re the ranking clinician, Wanda.”
RickeResources Building, CBD
547 felt a knot form in his stomach as the UE truck pulled up to the building. Some stressors were too much even for the training and the glasses to overcome.
All 547 knew about this assignment was that IAg226 had s
pecifically requested him, and that they’d needed to raise his clearance level before he could be officially engaged. In fact, 547 now had the highest security clearance in his cohort. The two Unnamed seated across from him were older and more experienced. He had never worked with them before.
“Come with me,” IAg226 said, opening the truck door. 547 and the other two team members followed her across the courtyard to the C-suite elevator. It was an express to the top floors, where Ricker and his highest-ranking officers did business, and where Ricker routinely issued threats and abuse to 547. The team boarded the elevator and it shot up.
As they ascended, IAg226 locked eyes with each of the team members in turn. 547 followed the link she’d flagged, which opened a video file recorded by Unnamed glasses in Ricker’s office. The room was unusually full of Unnamed, and Ricker and another man were shown shaking hands, then conversing in low voices. The glasses that had produced the recording identified the other man as Safran Aabott, who held the same top position with Andro-Heathcliffe Unnamed as Ricker did with the Organization Whose Confidence is Kept.
“The hell you are!” Ricker shouted suddenly. “I was given an ownership interest in this firm, by contract. I will be running this division until the day I am incapacitated.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Aabott said. Gunfire sounded and the camera tilted up at a strange angle. The video stopped.
The elevator doors opened at Ricker’s reception desk and the four stepped out.
“The merger happened exactly six hours and forty-two minutes after this encounter,” IAg226 said. “The last man you heard speaking is our new boss, who shall now remain Unnamed. Ricker and every member of the Fold he’d had here were shot multiple times. They have all been installed into the Organization’s Brain Trust.”
“If that recording was made hours ago, ma’am, how are we supposed to assist?” 547 asked. “Surely the killers are long gone.”
“Not all of our work is glamor and firefights, 547,” she said. “This assignment must be done by us because we’re the Organization’s most discreet workers. I figured you might enjoy the job more than the average member of the Fold. Grab a mop.”
Protest Outside the CBD
Kym Evans stared through the CBD fence, though there was nothing to see on the other side. The protesters looked to her with ever increasing desperation, especially now that they were all sealed permanently inside the Zone. Their attempt at revolution had failed, the General had disappeared, and Kym had nowhere to go with what was left of her army. She decided to keep them here, and attempt to channel their collective frustration and anger into a “protest” against the sealing of the Zone. It would do no good, but it gave her followers a sense of purpose, at least for the time being.
There was no market for anything, even drugs. There was no money here and also no food, and every day there were more threats from other groups and more rumors of cannibalism. Even so, a steady stream of Someones had been showing up.
That was how she thought of them, as Someones, the people who had changed after doses of Pink Shit. It had started as she’d been interviewing one after the other, eventually settling on the question, “Did you used to be someone else?” Living with Furius had taught her a few things about these people, and most important was the fact that their brand of craziness was consistent and predictable. Every one of them had become convinced that he or she was a historical character who had died willingly in service to some cause. Though none of them cared much about money or comfort, they were quite easy to motivate if one knew how.
Like this Someone standing before her now. Brand new, she would need Kym’s guidance to keep her in line.
“You found us, then,” she said. “Good.”
“I did.” Her nod was quick but solemn.
“Gonna be another whore, I’d guess,” Kym said. “That’s what you ancient gals seem to do most often.”
The woman grabbed Kym by the throat and slammed her against the wall. “I am not a woman! You are speaking to a Spartan warrior, and you call me a whore?”
Three protesters seized the attacker and beat her—him—until he stopped moving. Kym nodded her thanks. The girl who had been a Chinese slave buried with her mistress bowed deeply, but the Crusader and the Nazi just nodded back.
“Get rid of this one,” Kym said, kicking the Spartan. “Gotta maintain discipline an’ all that.”
“Yes, Colonel Kym,” the Crusader said. The others repeated it.
“Listen up, all of you,” she said. “This is my army, you got that? You are here because you need us. If we don’t stick together, we won’t survive. We don’t have much, but we’re doin’ better than most around here since the Zone sealed. We got food, even some clean water. Right now the Fiends and Saved are too busy killing each other to bother with us, but that’ll change soon, and whichever one of them wins will be coming after us next. I don’t care who you used to be. Right now this is the only army you’re part of, understand? No more bullshit.”
A sudden wave of nausea and dread enveloped Kym. She leaned on the wall for support, clutching her midsection.
This feeling had a source. It was being directed at her from somewhere off to her left. Kym turned toward the feeling, facing into what seemed to be its current, her hands forming involuntary fists and her face tightening into a vicious sneer that barely registered in her mind. No one was there. All she saw was a single rat perched on a pile of rubble.
547’s quarters, the Fold
547 sat on his bunk, gently running a thumb over the charred notebook he’d taken from the Chalk Bar. This treasure couldn’t have meant anything to Sett. For 547, though, it was a powerful and addictive drug. Reconditioned as he was to serve the Organization Whose Confidence is Kept, he experienced this account of the deplorable conditions inside the Organization’s worst enemy, Amelix Integrations, as confirmation that he was on the right side. Pathway amplification carried him to heights he couldn’t have reached without this book, which was proof from outside the umbrella that the Organization’s enemy was truly evil. 547 was precisely where he was supposed to be.
547 prepared to open it again to his favorite passage, which he kept marked with the only family heirloom in his possession: a white ribbon that had once been part of some ancestor’s wedding dress. He rolled his neck and shoulders and fluffed his pillow into the corner, settling comfortably against it. His fingers traced the ribbon down and gingerly slid it to the page edge. Paper was fragile and needed to be handled as little as possible, so he pulled the ribbon to open the book instead of touching the page directly with his finger. Two sheets were covered in awkward printing. The paragraph in the lower left corner always demanded his attention.
You’ve positioned Amelix before me and told me it’s my bridge to paradise, when in fact it’s a dead end that traps souls here forever. It will take more than your bullying and manipulation to claim my soul.
A real Amelix employee had held this very notebook in his hand and put these words here, confirming his firsthand observation that Amelix was hell on Earth. The Organization Whose Confidence is Kept had now merged with Amelix’s worst enemy, and 547 had become an integral part of that holy struggle. 547 lay the book across his chest, closing his eyes and reclining fully against the pillow, as pathway amplification boosted his bliss.
16
Williams Gypsum mine
Sett had left Coiner and Dok back in his assigned room by the machine bay, which his sister made him share with their mother’s dog. The three Unnamed of his team, and the three who occupied the office area with his sister, were audience enough. If he had to endure his sister’s humiliation and abuse, fewer witnesses were better. Besides, he needed Coiner to respect him if they were going to continue working together.
“I told you messing around with that Zone bar was a bad idea,” Chairman Two said. She had now assumed their father’s role in the organization and, like he had done years before, she had authorized her own Statusing. Now her giant,
genetically-enhanced, black-suited body was completely hairless. Her glasses had become transparent in the dim light, and Seth could see her lashless eyes seething at him through the lenses.
“Yes, Ma’am,” Sett said. While Sett had been living with the Subjects, their father had restructured the company, designating Ani to take over upon his incapacitation. When their father, who by that time had rechristened himself Chairman One, had suddenly collapsed and been immediately interred in the corporate Brain Trust, she had assumed the role of Chairman. Sett’s sister despised him, and now that she wielded the power their father had held, it was pointless to resist her. Sett knew better than to effectively flaunt his lack of reconditioning in front of the woman who could—and almost certainly soon would—order that error to be corrected.
Chairman Two had not asked what had happened. The attack on Chalk Bar had undoubtedly been the work of Ricker’s Unnamed.
“Dr. Muun would never have let you keep that place, anyway,” Two said. “He has impeccable standards; once the merger is complete, you aren’t likely to last long. Not unless changes are made.” Sett knew the unspoken meaning: Unless you’re reconditioned. “They produce everything, cheaply and with good quality. I mean, everyone has forced labor anymore, but there’s a reason the North Koreans are on top. An entire country of slaves! Can you imagine the power?”
Sett’s fear of his sister was nothing compared to the absolute terror he felt at the mention of Dr. Muun. “Ma’am,” Sett said. His shaking voice revealed the desperation that had made him speak in spite of himself. “The Muun organization has twenty million slaves. How can we be certain we won’t be numbered among them?”
The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy Page 32