by Linda Nagata
“I don’t care! Look what the LOVs have done. They killed Gabrielle. They’re killing you. And that cop. And God knows how many people when the debris came down. We did this, Panwar!”
“It wasn’t wrong!” Panwar’s gaze shifted to Virgil’s forehead, where his LOVs must be shedding their own eerie light. His chest labored, as he breathed in short, panting gasps. “Change this profound … it never comes peacefully. It’s never safe. Safety’s a … dead end. Not many see that. All the great moments in history … made out of desperation.”
“You’re crazy,” Virgil said again, his voice breaking. “Completely crazy.”
Panwar’s grip on his shirt relaxed; his hand fell away. But his wheezy voice carried on: “Listen. I’ve sent a data file to your ROSA. You’ve got access to my financial accounts. Take the Heroes. Cops can’t … trace ’em now. Get to the boat and … you’ll be okay.”
“I have to get help for you.”
Panwar chuckled weakly. “Knew you’d say that. We’re … in a tunnel. No signal … here. Take the Heroes.”
“But you were running! How could you be running when you were hurt this bad?”
“LOVs can … stimulate adrenaline flow too. Heard of it? Wounded soldiers fight on ‘cause they don’t know they’re dead yet.”
“You knew,” Virgil accused.
Panwar closed his eyes; he didn’t answer.
Virgil bent forward, listening for a wheezing breath; waiting for the warm fog of exhalation. Nothing. He felt for a heartbeat, but Panwar was still, not even the drip of seeping blood.
“Panwar, you knew!” His shout echoed up and down the tunnel, but it brought no response.
Virgil leaned back, feeling utterly lost. Panwar’s LOVs still glistened … but was their light already fading? He looked back down the tunnel; he listened. There was no sound there yet. A voice whispered inside him, go. Truly, what else was there to do? What else was there to lose?
He looked at Panwar one more time. He cupped his face. He kissed his forehead. Then he took the Heroes from Panwar’s slack hand and put them on.
The photomultiplier function was on, and Panwar was suddenly drenched in a sickly green tomb-light.
Virgil stood, his heart pumping faster, faster at every stroke, as if Panwar’s escaping spirit had leaped inside him and now his body had to do the work of two wills. He took a moment to remember the direction they had come from. In the dark, monotonous passage it was so easy to be confused. Only the bloody footprints on the floor confirmed the right direction.
Virgil set off, counting the steps that carried him away from the life he used to know.
chapter
10
ELA SUVANATAT CROUCHED in the prow of a fisherman’s open boat, astounded to find herself in an argument with her job broker, Joanie Liu. “What do you mean you want me to reconsider?” she demanded, shouting to be heard over the roar of the boat’s ancient diesel engine as it ran full speed toward the crash site. “Why should I ‘reconsider’ diving the site? I’m going to be first on the scene! Of course I’m going to do it. I’ll never have an opportunity like this again.”
Ela had promised the fisherman a bonus if he got her to the site ahead of everyone else. Every time the speeding boat hacked across the top of a swell, she found herself drenched in a fine spray of seawater—not that it mattered! Of the handful of boats that had put out from shore, none were closer to the impact site. She presumed there would be helicopters coming down from Saigon, but even they would not beat her to the prize. She was already wearing her wetsuit vest and her rebreather pack. Her goggle cups were ready to attach to her farsights. Her fins were in hand. She could be over the side in thirty seconds … so why was Joanie hesitating to broker a deal?
“You’re not listening to me!” Joanie insisted as her image frowned from Ela’s farsights. “I’m serious. This could be a dangerous situation—”
“Being poor is dangerous too! Are you angry because I tried to sell the crash vid without you?”
Joanie looked startled. “No, of course not. What else could you do on such short notice? By the way, it’s a great file, better than anything the big agencies have put out.”
Ela leaned forward. “So you’ll be able to sell it?”
Joanie looked askance, the way she always did when she was about to deliver bad news. “You need to understand, the market is saturated with crash images right now… .”
“Shit,” Ela whispered. This day had begun with so much potential, but that was twice now she’d missed a fee by showing up late—and this time it was Joanie’s fault. She’d taken half an hour to pick up Ela’s emergency link—“other business” she had explained.
Ela was determined not to miss out again. With the crash of the EquaSys module, opportunity had fallen in her lap—but it was up to her to make it pay.
She had not waited for Joanie’s permission to begin.
As soon as the water had receded she’d turned the lost baby over to a shell-shocked Phuong. Then she’d climbed the tilted ruins of the broken platform to see what could be salvaged from her equipment. Her backpack was gone of course, but in a joyous discovery she found her diving gear wedged behind a plastic crate. The rebreather pack was covered with mud, but at least the wave had not taken it away.
She grabbed it and hopped off the platform, knowing her career would be made if she moved quickly, if she could get herself out to the crash site before anyone else and provide the first close-up images of the disaster. Which meant she needed to hire a boat right away.
She cast her gaze up and down the shoreline. There were hundreds of people all along the seaside margin of the village. They had come to poke at the debris, or study the broken pilings of the houses. Some just stared out to sea. Ela tried not to see the despair on their faces. This had been a squatters’ village! Doomed from the start by its location on the edge of a rising sea, in the floodplain of a mighty river. No one could have expected the homes here to last more than a few months …
… but who could have guessed the end would come this soon?
Where would these people go? What would they do?
Watching them made Ela all too conscious of the delicate nature of her own position. If she slipped, if she failed to make the most of the opportunity she’d been given, she could wind up with nothing too.
How ironic that the disaster that had wrecked this village could still prove a blessing for her—if she could exploit it. One solid contract could bring in enough money to get her to Australia, and once there, she might find a real job … but first Joanie had to get her a deal.
“I don’t understand what you’re so worried about,” Ela said.
Joanie raised her hands in a pleading gesture. “Can’t you see this is an international incident? Powerful people will be fighting over the salvage—”
“All the more reason to exploit the opportunity,” Ela insisted. “Think of the publicity! These American technocrats have killed people. They’ve endangered the whole world—”
“Ela, the site itself could be dangerous. There could be chemical spills, maybe even a radiation hazard.”
Ela shook her head. There would be no radiation hazard. The news reports had assured the world of that.
There could be chemicals.
Ela glared at the silt-clouded water, remembering the stunned look on Phuong’s face when she had realized she’d lost everything to the wave. Ela had glimpsed herself in Phuong’s eyes. The two of them were so much alike. The only thing that separated them was luck.
Her angry gaze shifted back to Joanie. “If I get sick, you can sue EquaSys.”
Joanie rolled her eyes. “After this, do you think they’ll have anything left to pay?”
THE elevator doors opened, and Summer Goforth looked out on a swirl of police, paramedics, and physicians crowding the close confines of the EquaSys building’s subbasement. Her gaze fixed on the only still point in the kaleidoscope of activity: Daniel Simkin, director of the Internationa
l Biotechnology Commission. He stood beside the elevator doors in whispered conference with an aide.
Daniel Simkin was not a big man, but there was a power in his compact build that Summer still found attractive. His face was fair; his eyebrows even more so, almost disappearing against his skin. His blond hair was trimmed into a spare, compact helmet on his round head. He looked up as she stepped off the elevator car. He looked her over, his eyes hidden behind the blind silver sheen of opaqued farsights.
During Summer’s visit to the LOV project suite, Daniel had been aboard a UAL flight out of Washington, D.C., but his attention had been with her. He had looked out through her farsights at Virgil Copeland and Randall Panwar, listening to every word of their conversation, studying every nuance of their facial expressions, and interjecting questions for Summer to ask and instructions for her to follow.
The link to Epsilon-3 had been left open at his request. He had wanted to see what Copeland would do, what he might reveal. And thank God Summer’s objections had gone on the record. Given the fallout, it was easy to imagine Simkin trying to put the blame for that decision on her.
“We were lucky,” he said, before she could speak. “If Copeland hadn’t brought the module down, it might have been months before we discovered the escaped LOVs on the Hammer.”
So that was how he would play it.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “You were lucky no one was killed.”
It had been a stupid chance to take, but Daniel would make it look right. He always did. He was a survivor: a Ph.D. biochemist with the wiliness of a politician and the ruthlessness of a third world dictator. Once upon a time Summer had found that combination of traits perversely attractive. Judging by his career, she was not the only one who had ever felt that way.
“You’re right of course,” Simkin said. “If we hadn’t gotten warning bulletins out immediately, untold thousands would have been at risk on the ground.”
“Are we on the record?” she asked.
“From now on, you should assume that.”
After being up all night with Copeland and Panwar, Summer had been glad to get home. But she’d hardly closed her eyes when her ROSA woke her with a terse note from Simkin, summoning her back to the EquaSys building: There’s been an escape attempt. Consider yourself hired on as a consultant. We need your expertise.
Returning downtown had proved an unexpected challenge. A predicted rainstorm had finally arrived from the south, driven by gale winds. The deluge flooded the streets, tying traffic in knots, and a drive that should have taken half an hour consumed nearly ninety minutes instead. Perhaps she had arrived too late to be of any help? Amid the flurry of personnel, she saw no sign of either Copeland or Panwar. “Where are they?” she asked.
Simkin nodded at a steel door set in the subbasement wall. “The paramedics are bringing Randall Panwar out now.”
Summer stepped back a pace as rescue personnel emerged bearing a white-wrapped body strapped to a wire gurney. “My God,” she whispered. “What did you do to him?”
“Shot while attempting to escape,” Simkin said, as the gurney’s wheels were unfolded. “He barricaded himself in the tunnel and bled to death. There was nothing we could do.” At Simkin’s direction, the white sheet was pulled back to reveal Panwar’s face, peaceful in death, the eyes closed. “Summer, I want you to remove his LOVs before they die with him.”
“They’re still alive?” Suppressing her revulsion, she leaned over the body to peer at the tiny flecks of glitter on Panwar’s gray brow. One of them flickered faint blue-green. “My God,” she whispered again. How was it possible for his LOVs to be alive? Without Panwar’s blood and body to nurture them, they should have died within a minute, two at most.
Simkin said, “The Villanti girl’s LOVs survived over four hours after her death.”
How could that be? Were they adjusting their metabolism? Slowing down when resources grew scarce? She frowned, thinking hard. She had designed the original LOVs to be fragile, like some pampered strain of lab rat that wouldn’t last a minute in the wild. But Virgil Copeland had described those original LOVs as “museum pieces.” Modern LOVs were different, not even compatible with the antique forms. Copeland had been aware of that, but even he had not understood how much the LOVs had changed.
On her slow drive back to the EquaSys building, Summer had skimmed a first-pass report compiled from what little was known about the mutated LOVs infesting the Hammer’s fiber-optic cables. No LOV should have been able to survive that dry environment. Where had they gotten their nutrients? It seemed impossible, and yet it had happened … leading to the ominous conclusion that LOVs were far more adaptable than anyone had guessed.
She straightened, turning to Simkin with a frown. “Do you really want these LOVs to stay alive?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and spoke in a neutral voice. “Well of course, Summer. That’s why I brought you here. Any thug could pull the LOVs out and drop them in a vial of acid. But the main colony is extinct while the feral LOVs left behind aboard the Hammer have been exterminated. These LOVs are the last, so until their status is legally determined …”
Oh. Simkin was covering his ass. Now that Panwar and Copeland represented the last of the LOVs, any court could declare their population an endangered species.
She stepped away from the body. “Even if I knew how to remove the LOVs without killing them—and I don’t—it’s illegal to cultivate them here on Earth. I won’t be a party to it.”
He cocked his head. “You’re refusing to try?”
She glanced again at the body. No one could say anymore what the LOVs were capable of. They were an artificial life-form that had already escaped once from a lockdown facility. Who could guarantee they would not escape again? Only this morning she had worried over the potential of the LOVs to develop into an intellect capable of competing with a human mind … but combine that intellectual potential with a talent for physical adaptation, and the result was a recipe for disaster. She could no longer doubt that the LOVs were a mistake, a threat best disposed of as quickly as possible. “Yes,” she said. “I am refusing. It’s too dangerous to keep them alive.”
Simkin smiled, looking satisfied with this exchange. “Then we’ll have to find someone else with the expertise to remove them.”
Summer knew she had responded as he’d hoped. By the time he found someone else “qualified” to remove the LOVs, it would be too late—while the responsibility had been neatly transferred to her.
So be it, then. She had brought them into this world; it was only right she take them out. It was the right thing to do.
She watched the gurney being rolled onto the elevator. Then she turned to Simkin. His right hand was tapping as he talked to someone she could not see. It would have been polite to wait, but she didn’t feel polite. “So where is Copeland?”
Simkin cast her an irritated glance. “That is the question of the hour.”
He went back to his conversation, but Summer circled around him. “Wait a minute, Daniel. What are you telling me? You don’t know where he is?”
Simkin scowled, muttering “Hold on,” to whoever he was talking to. “He fled down the utility tunnel, with a twenty-minute head start and a choice of some forty possible exits.”
“So? Traffic cams should have picked him up once he hit the streets. You know it’s pouring rain out there. There can’t be that many pedestrians.”
“We’ve put a ROSA on it. We’re doing everything we can, Summer.”
But did he understand the urgency? “Daniel, he’s supporting a viable population of LOVs. You can’t let him escape.”
“We’ll find him. It’s only a matter of time.”
She took his arm. She pulled him away from an aide who had stopped to ask a question. “Listen to me,” she whispered, “because I am truly scared. Right now Virgil Copeland has the only viable reservoir of LOVs in the world. What if he decides to change that? What if he decides to let them reproduce? If
you give him time to spread them around, you might never know for sure if they’ve truly been exterminated. We could be fighting this problem for years to come.”
“Spread them around? How could he do that? If you can’t remove them without damage—”
“You don’t have to remove them to let them reproduce.”
He frowned. “Don’t they require very specific conditions … ?”
“I used to think so.”
“Summer—”
“Daniel, think about it! The best way to grow LOVs is in a tank, but that’s not the only way. What if Copeland could induce his LOVs to reproduce in vivo, in the flesh. It shouldn’t be hard. Then he could harvest the progeny and give them away.”
“Who would—”
“A lot of people would. The LOVs can make you smarter, Daniel. They can make your moods more powerful, and more effective. I know quite a few people who would have a hard time saying no to that. If even one escapes, we could be looking at a LOV plague.”
“We’re doing everything we can.”
“I hope so. I hope it’s enough.”
THE impact had stirred up silt from the seafloor, turning the water a dirty brown. Ela peered over the side of the boat, trying to see to the bottom, to catch a glimpse of the debris, but it was impossible. She looked back at the shore, squinting at landmarks to gauge her position. Was this really where one of the fragments had fallen? She threw a questioning look at the fisherman. He only shrugged.
Ela bit her lip, thinking hard. This might be the site. Or it might not. There was no way for her to tell except by going in. And if she guessed wrong, she wouldn’t get a second chance. The helicopters from Saigon would be there in minutes.
Joanie’s image appeared again in her farsights. “Okay, Ela. I’ve got a working contract. If you can get pictures uploaded at least two minutes before anyone else, you’ll make twenty thousand. If it’s less than two minutes, you’ll earn five. If you’re behind the competition, you get nothing.”