The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy

by Mark D. Diehl

  The Grand Hall was part of the complex that Top Dog had made his headquarters. It was located within the most secure section of New Union territory, and it had become the center of Divinator activity. The large, cavernous room had once been some kind of transportation terminal, and a chest-high, room-wide dais had been added at one end. This funeral stuff was new, an attempt to provide comfort for the Elements and thus bolster their dedication. The New Union was suffering casualty rates it had never before experienced, now that the Saved were armed with Federal weapons.

  While the Subjects had traditionally kept their artifacts hidden from view, the New Union recognized the power they had when made visible to the ranks. Each item had been carefully lashed to a staff, so that it could be carried and displayed easily over the worshipping masses. There were now three Pure Water staves, which were being used by Rus and two other Divinators out among the bodies. At the front of the room, the ranking Divinators were performing a ritual with staves supporting more sacred artifacts that invoked protection, including a carved and inlaid cat skull known as Fang, a fist-sized ball of milky quartz the New Union had named the Soul of Unity, and a bioplexi box with a tube inside that the Subjects called the General’s Ashes.

  Rage tore through Rus in a hot, caustic wave, and he reflexively clutched the vial of Juice at his neck. A rat stood on its hind legs halfway between himself and the elevated sacred area. It had to die, immediately and gruesomely, but he would not smash it with the staff, no matter how much every cell in his body was screaming for him to do so. The Pure Water was of vital importance and had to be sheltered and protected by any Divinator who was capable of doing so, but there was no time to put it away. The rat had to die now.

  He would have to stomp the rat with his feet instead.

  As the rat turned and darted toward a side door, the three ranking Divinators leaped from the dais and ran through the Grand Hall so recklessly that they stumbled over the bodies. They raced out the door, chasing the rat, raising their staves over their shoulders as if trying to spear the animals.

  Rus followed, clutching the staff in a white-knuckled grip, with the other two Divinators close behind him.

  Touring the new Andro-Heathcliffe structure

  547’s eyes traced the long translucent tubes as they bent and coiled around each other. He could see hundreds of individual brains and spinal cords through the observation window, lined up side by side by side in a lumpy spiral held together by the fluid-filled tubes. It was impressive, yet this exhibit displayed only a tiny fraction of the precisely interconnected components in the Organization’s massive Brain Trust. Briefly he wondered if any of these brains might be Clayton Ricker’s.

  “And that’s another interesting thing,” his guide said flatly, who appeared to be consulting notes through his EI. “Human brains naturally communicate. In Brain Trusts we’ve found it doesn’t matter what language the individual spoke in life; we can connect them and use them together or interchangeably. It matters only that they’re human. They’re hard-wired to receive information from each other and pass it on. The Brain Trust will control and coordinate all of the structure’s movements, just like the brain of a living animal would do as it moved. If and when it becomes necessary to relocate this structure, it will seem almost alive in the process.”

  Now that he’d been cleared as one of the new Whites, 547’s glasses, in addition to accessing all the Organization’s own intelligence, also now had Federal clearance. He could find out anything about anyone. This tour guide, Beni Kovach, had always had perfect behavior but had been a bit on the slow side in school. One teacher had even entered a comment in the record: “Beni is the hardest worker in the class, which helps to overcome his intellectual simplicity.” He tended to prefer men but had been between relationships for the unusually long period of ten months. This might have had something to do with the fact his taste in pornography was almost exclusively limited to suffocation, needles, and enemas.

  Beni lectured on. “Because the Amelix attack raised particular concerns about security in this area, Andro-Heathcliffe initiated this project at our location. This structure is our prototype and is at the most advanced stage of development. After this one is tested and rolled out, what we learn here will be used to design even better ones.”

  That was close enough to the whole story. The truth was that construction of the other structures was delayed for strategic reasons. The Organization’s spies had stolen some Amelix tech, and development of the other buildings had been halted so that the stolen elements could be implemented. The subsequent structures would be significantly more advanced than this prototype.

  These tours were mandatory for Whites, but most other workers only got to go on one if they were being specially rewarded. The glasses told him everything even remotely related to security, from identities, to work records, to Federal files on three generations of their ancestry, and all he had to do was look to the edges of his vision at the folders and files to pull them up.

  There was one other adult with him in this tour group, and 547’s glasses informed him that the woman, Ela Belinay, had gotten here by proving herself the most valuable Clerical Supervisor in finance for a third year in a row. Her employment file showed her to be devoted and self-sacrificing; she’d twice been strategically divorced by men who had left her to marry up after she’d made significant sacrifices to her own career to help them advance in theirs. The rest of the group consisted of four kids who had won a regional award on an extracurricular science project. The file had a picture of them with their virtual trophies. The boy’s name was Robi, and he and the two older girls, Gen-li and Lora, were from Andro-Heathcliffe High School. The younger girl, Petra, was a middle schooler and sister to Lora. The sisters had a third cousin who had been investigated for corporate espionage but Departed before a report was issued.

  Nobody called the Unnamed “sir,” or any other honorific, and the same was true with regard to the Whites. That was not surprising, but he had hoped to hear a more ingratiating tone from civilians, more akin to the way people addressed Federal Angels. After all, he was this structure’s Federal authority, now. At least the white suit looked sharp.

  Gen-li raised her hand and Beni nodded at her. “If it’s alive like an animal, do you have to feed it?”

  The guide responded with the standard Accepted smile, his lips stretching wide to show most of his top and bottom teeth. “That’s a great question!” he said. “Yes, we do ‘feed’ the structure. It uses the same sterile nutrients we all use in our synthesizers, and we load them in almost exactly the way they’re loaded at home, though obviously on a much bigger scale. In case of emergency, the structure also has a fully functioning protein refinery and is capable of processing organic material it finds.”

  “Does it have a name?” Petra asked.

  “Yes. We call it the Agnes. Originally, it wasn’t intended for any of the Andro-Heathcliffe structures to have names, but during the early stages of biodevelopment, workers on the project’s centralized planning team came up with nicknames to help them easily differentiate among the prospective sites. This first prototype was originally designated Site A, and I’m told they came up with Agnes from that.”

  547’s new white-framed glasses signaled an emergency call, the first he’d received as a White. The glasses showed it was from IAg281. “Yes, ma’am?” he answered. Thirty-eight other Whites answered the same way, at the same time.

  “Seal it!” 281 shouted, her voice equal parts authority and panic. “Seal it, now. Right now. Don’t let any rats on board!

  “Move! Now! Get the structure operational and bring it here to the CBD to rescue the office staff. Now!” There was a kind of choking noise over the connection then, a brief gasping and gurgling, and the sound of something falling or crashing.

  “Ma’am?” 547 called. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Ma’am?” another White, IAj114, said. “281, Ma’am?”

  Other Whites attempted to hail her throug
h audio and text, but there was no response.

  “Beni,” 547 said. “Take me to the control room.”

  Somewhere deep in the Zone, far from the protest area

  Kym chased the rat, her veins pulsing with hatred and malice. The entire protest, which by now had grown to several hundred people, ran behind her. Her sides ached, her muscles were fatigued and sore, and she was feeling increasingly disoriented, but none of that mattered. Only killing the rat was important, now.

  In her peripheral vision, Kym saw another huge mob charging toward them. She didn’t know who they were, or what their intentions might be. She didn’t care. Killing the rat was all she could think about.

  Someone came between Kym and the animal, blocking her sight. She swung her fists and kicked, shoving the human out of her way to keep the rat in view.

  A second rat crossed paths with the one she was following, and then a third. She hated the new ones with the same intensity as she had the first. As more and more rats appeared, her fury compounded into a rage beyond anything she’d ever felt before. Following one creature and then another with her eyes, she lifted her head to discover that her group was converging with many others at a six-street circular intersection.

  Thousands of people were chasing rats in every direction, shoving and clubbing and slashing each other to get better access. Everywhere she looked, Kym saw stabbing, smashing, grappling, kicking, tearing and biting. People fell everywhere, bleeding, moaning, and writhing.

  Kym tripped over one of the bodies and landed in the gravel, sliding on her elbows and chin. Crazed people kicked and trampled her in their desperate attacks on the rats. The dead woman she’d tripped over had been carrying a knife. Kym snatched it and slashed wildly around her, cutting calves and shins and knees, finally clearing a space large enough for her to stand again.

  The intersection was packed with people fighting, and new groups were still arriving, all of them chasing rats. When people did manage to connect with one of the animals, they continued fighting each other to stomp into paste whatever piece of it they could find. Each street leading into the intersection was jammed solid with people, stretching as far as she could see in every direction.

  Gunfire sounded from everywhere at once.

  Fiends!

  Rarely did anyone see Fiends, even while being robbed by them, yet here they were, running around crazily right in the open, firing their rifles, not at the crowd but at the rats. They caused human casualties with every trigger pull, killing many of their own kind, but still they shot and shot. There were so many people and so many guns here, now. Many wore the blotchy black of the Saved.

  A bullet smashing through Kym’s face brought instantaneous and apparently divine understanding. The humans here had been intentionally led to this place to die.

  The new Amelix structure

  “Doctor Kessler, please calm down at once,” Zabeth Chelsea said. The man was crouched in the corner with both arms curled above his head. Keiko sat at a conference table, looking concerned and utterly confused.

  Chelsea knelt beside him but he kept his shoulders hunched and his face buried. “There’s a reason you feel this way,” she said. “I feel it, too, but I’ve learned to be stronger than the panic.”

  This was a lie. She knew she was only able to overcome the panic because the Rat Gods had been keeping her constantly in Thrall.

  “I suspected that you and I might have had our blood chemistry altered a bit after that last meeting with the Amelix Medical Doctor,” she continued. “It turns out there are four different compounds in our blood samples that have been associated with terrible paranoia, claustrophobia, or both.”

  She lost her patience, ripping his arms away so she could look into his face. “Are you listening at all? This is not you! You’re not actually afraid of working here. The MD knows that this structure is the future, and she’s sabotaging your career by keeping you off of it this way. You’re still a valued Amelix asset so her ethics won’t let her kill you, but she can stall out your promotions by keeping you from working in the new offices. That way she can punish you but not the organization. Kessler! You don’t have to let her win.”

  “Yes, I do,” Kessler said. His arms came back up. “I don’t care about my career. I don’t care about anything but getting out of here right now. Please let me go. Please?” He wasn’t so much speaking as he was whimpering.

  “Shh, shh. Don’t worry. I have just the thing to help. Keiko, dear, I’ve given you access to my office via EI. Go open the door for me.”

  Federal Building

  Nobody but a Federal Agent like Daiss could have walked this far through the hyper-violent sealed Zone and survived. Nobody without a genetically enhanced physique could have walked this distance at all. Yet he had arrived safely at the Federal Building, carrying five rats on his person and with an unknown number trailing him on the ground. He walked up to the front door, still clutching his Gloria 9 sidearm. They had left him control of his eyes but not his head, so although he knew there were rats on all sides of him now, he had no idea how many there might be. He could see only the ones that got out in front.

  He met no resistance in entering the building, even though he was spattered with Lehri’s blood and holding his weapon at the ready. Nobody even looked up as he passed. As he reached an intersection of hallways that had walls of darkened electrobioplexi, Daiss was finally able to see the rat entourage behind him, numbering possibly twenty or thirty. He turned one way—or rather, they turned him one way—and in the reflection, some of the rats went off in the opposite direction. They marched him around the ground floor, with rats dispersing at various points, until finally he was left with the one original rat that had claimed him. It took him to a corner of a wide office and made him stand there with his back to the wall.

  Finally, another Agent noticed him and approached him warily. “Are you all right, Agent?” she asked. “Why are you holding your weapon? Is this your assigned floor?”

  Daiss still had control of his eyes. He gestured with them toward his jacket pocket. She saw him and her own eyes squinted a bit, but then Daiss couldn’t see her anymore. His own eyes had slammed shut so hard tears came out and his vision filled with yellow sparks. His jaw clenched shut so tightly that he was sure his teeth would crack. His neck muscles tightened into ropes, and then his chest and torso seized up. The rat only let up when he started to lose consciousness. While it still kept his arms and legs under control and wouldn’t enable him to speak, it allowed him to gasp for breath and open his eyes again. The other Agent was now holding her weapon and had positioned herself next to him with her back against the wall. He scanned the room and the immediate area, but didn’t see any more rats. Her jacket pockets lay flat. It seemed his rat was now controlling both of them.

  Fear was to be expected in a case like this, even for a Federal Agent. Even, possibly, for a Zeta. Pleasure, however, was not something he would have anticipated. Being under the rat’s spell like this gave him an ecstatic feeling that was psychological as well as physical. After hours of struggle, trying to counteract the rat’s influence, he’d finally accepted that it was impossible. There was nothing more he could do to meet his duty of resistance, and that knowledge fed the feeling of helpless euphoria. He was free to enjoy the endless pleasure they gave him in exchange for control. In fact, he’d never felt so free before.

  Amelix Building

  Keiko opened Dr. Chelsea’s office door. All the cages were open and there were rats everywhere, swarming on the floor and climbing up the stacks of open cages that were themselves crammed full of rats. A large group had gathered close together on the countertop. They stood up on their hind legs, watching her intently.

  The rats streamed past her and scurried down the hall.

  Company-wide emergency message, as seen through Chelsea’s EI

  Walt Zytem’s electric blue eyes pierced Chelsea’s consciousness as his Statused face appeared in her mind, seeming to take up all of the spac
e before her.

  “This is Walt Zytem, speaking to every Amelix employee in the world through emergency protocols. You are ordered to seal the new structures immediately. We have reason to believe that a bioterrorist attack is underway, using rats in a manner that has not yet been determined. Seal the buildings! All of them. Seal off any labs with rats and do not engage rats in any way. Seal every structure right now!”

  Too late, Dr. Zytem.

  Chelsea would have shaken her head at the announcement, but the rats didn’t allow her to do so.

  17

  The Great Midwestern Desert

  “Why wouldn’t they have loaded the biocat?”190 asked. The truck had died in the wasteland of the Great Midwestern Desert. There was no way to restart it without recharging the biocatalytic reactor.

  “My sister must have told them not to service this one after we drove it out here from the city,” Sett said. “She didn’t want me leaving of my own accord.”

  They’d stretched a Mylar blanket from the first-aid kit over the tops of the open doors. Dok had patched up Coiner and was now resting next to him in its shade. 190 was in the passenger seat, viewing some projection through his EI. Sett sat at the wheel, staring out at the blowing grit through his own glasses that had fully darkened under the desert sun. His mother’s little dog was curled up in the back of the truck.