by Linda Nagata
VIRGIL turned his farsights back on when he and Ky reached the edge of the mangrove stand. Instantly, a link to Ela opened. “Virgil! You and Ky have to come back. Now. There’s only a little time.” Fear whispered in the sibilant undertones of her voice. Virgil knew better than to ask questions. He followed Ky into the boat, grabbed the pole, and began pushing for home.
AT HIGH noon the overflights stopped. Daniel Simkin spoke to them again, though this time it was a private communication as he explained in detail how they were to exit the Sea Palace one by one, walking outside into the pestilence-laden air, where they would present themselves for arrest.
“Come find us in the ocean room,” Ela countered softly, determined to seize these few extra minutes for the LOVs to finish their task. “We’ll be waiting for you here. We won’t resist.”
There was a disturbance at the curtain. She peeked past, and discovered a crippled spider trying to get through, but it was contaminated. It could not be allowed in. So she kicked it through the curtain, three times, breaking its legs. Then she crouched by the barrier, peering through a slit at the outer door.
Ninh squatted beside her. “Ky and Virgil are almost here.” He sent her the screen. The image was skewed but she could see them: two small figures, Virgil poling the boat, Ky crouched in the bow, watching for snags and shoals.
“Hurry,” she whispered.
Virgil nodded, his harsh breathing loud in her ear.
A helicopter lifted from an offshore platform. It swept toward shore, toward the boat, coming in fast. Virgil glanced at it. Then he shouted a warning to Ky and jammed his pole into the mud, sending the boat skidding forward. It rammed against a hidden mud bar, but both men were ready for the impact. Ela watched them leap clear; watched them splash down in knee-deep water. They broke for the Sea Palace in a stumbling run. Loudspeakers shouted at them to freeze and drop their weapons. It was a show, Ela knew. Part of the endless quest for better ratings. The IBC knew they were unarmed.
Virgil and Ky might have read the script. They ignored the warning and ran faster.
Virgil reached the stairs a step ahead of Ky. He glanced up, and through his farsights Ela saw the helicopter loom into view above the parapet. Its shadow caught him in a column of darkness, the negative image of a searchlight. The loudspeaker again commanded him to freeze. Instead he darted under the arch as shock troops in color-shifting camouflage slid out of the helicopter’s belly, gliding like water drops down twin cables.
Ela’s viewpoint shifted. Now she peeked past the barrier of wet blankets, watching Virgil with her own eyes. He saw her. “Ela!” His eyes were wild.
“Hurry up!” she screamed at him. Then: “There’s not enough time.”
Ky filled the arch of sunlight behind him. “I’ll hold the door.”
“You can’t hold the door,” Virgil said.
“Go!” Ky roared. “Go see what she wants!” He turned back to face the troops, his hands raised, palms out. Then a flash of brilliant light erupted from his farsights, a tiny lightning bolt chasing back the shadows in the palace hall. Ky cried out in pain. His hands shot up as if to grab the farsights away from his face. He never reached them.
The shock troops outside saw the sudden movement, and fired. Ky’s shoulder blade exploded. A second round opened a crater in his lower back. Blood sprayed the walls, falling in heavy spatters across Virgil’s shirt as he turned a stunned face toward the carnage.
“Virgil!” Ela screamed. “Come now! Now.”
Outside the soldiers were shouting, conjuring explanations for the murder. It shouldn’t have happened. Ky was unarmed. Anyone could see that. Anyone at all, because Ela sent the sequence to her news site while Virgil lingered wasteful seconds over this tangle of protein that used to be Ky Xuan Nguyen.
“Virgil.”
He looked around at her.
“Now. Please.” He would have to come to her. She would not step around the curtain and risk contaminating the Roi Nuoc. None of them knew how long the design change would take, or if it would work at all. They needed time. She would not take a second of it away from them.
Her urgency must have burned past his shock. He ran to her. He did not slow down. “Wait! Stop!” Ela cried. She raised her hand in a warding gesture. “Don’t come in. You’re not clean.”
Virgil stumbled, his eyes wide as a frightened dog’s. He stopped himself with a hand against the wall. His chest heaved and sweat shone all across the rosy flush of his face. Great smears of blood stank across his shirt. He started to step away.
“No!” she shouted. “Don’t go.” She edged her shoulder past the barrier of hanging blankets, feeling the dampness licking at her skin. “Look at me. Think with me—”
“There’s no time. My God, Ela. They—”
“Now.” She reached toward him. She touched his cheek; the back of his neck, drawing him closer.
“It’s too late,” he whispered. “Lien and her cadre—”
“I know.”
“And Ky—”
“It’s too late,” she agreed. “Kiss me now.”
His gaze sharpened. He must have caught some encoded trace of her mood. “You know something.”
“Kiss me now.” Her lips brushed his cheek, moved barely against his ear: Let me teach you to retreat.
He embraced her, his arms so tight her breath came hard. “Listen to me!” she gasped.
She drew back far enough to meet his eye; far enough for her LOVs to whisper their secrets. His mouth brushed hers. Then he froze, staring deep into her eyes. His raw shock filled her. “What have you done?”
She didn’t answer. She only kissed him again lightly as silhouettes of armored soldiers gathered in the brilliant afternoon light pouring down outside the doorway. He heard them, but she would not let him turn and look. “They murdered Ky,” he whispered.
“I know.”
“We need to talk.”
“There’s no time.”
“We can’t give up.”
“We haven’t.” She closed her eyes and kissed him hard, fixing the sensation of it, the scent of him in her mind. Tasting his raw shock. How had it come to this?
“Step away,” a stern voice said.
She looked up into the faceless shield of a soldier’s mask. What had moved her to make the choices she had made? What moved anyone? She never would have chosen this end; Virgil never would have consented to this outcome … except they had, with every decision made since the module fell.
chapter
40
THE EVACUATION WENT swiftly. Each Roi Nuoc was placed under arrest. Their farsights were confiscated. They were transported by helicopter to a converted merchant ship waiting offshore in stormy seas. After a quick march across a rolling deck, they were taken below where they were placed in separate, padded cells, seven by seven feet. There were no bars, no windows, and no furniture. A grill in the ceiling introduced air that was sterile and without scent. Ela sat on the padded floor, staring at the gray walls. Waiting.
She could not get Ky’s death out of her mind. She tried hard not to think about him but every time her eyes shifted she thought she saw blood on the walls. She could not get the smell of it out of her nostrils. Why was he dead? He had not threatened anybody. She saw it all again: the way he had turned back to the door, palms raised in peace, ready to negotiate for a few more seconds, a minute or two of additional time, and they had shot him down.
Hadn’t it gone that way? No. She was forgetting that strange flash of light from Ky’s farsights, a burst of electronic lightning that must have seared his eyes. He’d reacted instinctively, grabbing for the farsights. The nervous soldiers had jumped just as hard and then Ky had died.
Killed by that one frantic gesture. He might be alive now if not for that flash of light.
Where had it come from? Ela wondered. What had caused it? Mother Tiger would know, but without farsights Ela had no way to contact the ROSA.
Maybe it had been a booby-trap message sent
by the IBC. Maybe similar accidents would happen to all of them.
She could not sit still. So she went to examine the cell door, following the seam with her fingernails, but both the lock and the hinges were hidden. She looked up at the air vent. It was out of reach, even when she jumped. She sat down again.
Where was Virgil now? Where was Oanh?
Again she looked up at the air vent. “Maybe I could get a bath?” she said aloud. Then later: “I want to see a lawyer.” They would probably send in a death squad instead.
But no one came.
Absently, she scratched her forehead, wondering what to do next. Later, when she looked at her fingertips, minute white specks glittered behind her nails. She sucked in a sharp breath. Then she scratched her head again. More specks appeared. Her hand started to shake, so she pressed it against the padded floor to hide her distress from any watching cameras.
Her LOVs were flaking away. Panic stirred in her belly. She had planned for this to happen; she had helped to engineer it, but how could she be sure it was only the outer shells of her LOVs that were dying? What if the asterids themselves had been poisoned by some viral weapon of the IBC?
She closed her eyes, breathing deeply, slowly, concentrating on an image of blood spattered across white walls. She would surely feel the loss of the asterids. But she felt the same. Even this fear was utterly familiar.
SUMMER Goforth arrived in Saigon in late afternoon, on an IBC charter flight in the company of Daniel Simkin. They were ferried out to the ship on a helicopter that bucked and shuddered in the rising wind. Beneath them, whitecaps screamed off heaving waves. Lightning crackled on the horizon. The helicopter set down hard on the rolling ship, breaking a strut.
The storm seemed to lessen when they were inside, and could no longer see the furious weather. That was illusion of course. The worst would come tonight.
Summer toured the holding cells with Simkin and his aides. She viewed the security arrangements. There was a surgical facility, but rough seas made it impossible to consider the delicate procedure that must be required to remove the symbiotic LOVs.
At last they were shown into a small conference room, where coffee was served with a light supper. Simkin left to take a private call. His aides had business of their own and soon Summer was alone. It was not unexpected.
She looked around the little room: six chairs and a table and maps on the wall. No doubt they hoped she would stay here and be content. Daniel had not wanted to bring her along at all, but he’d given in when she threatened to resign. Evidently there was a chance he might still need her.
She slipped her farsights on.
She had been given access to the camera feeds from each holding cell. She scrolled through them now, glimpsing youths huddled in corners, or twitching in restless sleep. Virgil’s cell was empty. Someone had said he’d been taken to another room for questioning. Ela Suvanatat was present.
Summer watched her for several minutes, perplexed by her spasmodic movement. Every few seconds her right hand would rise to scratch compulsively at the LOVs on her forehead: just one scrape of her fingernail; rarely two. Then she would yank her hand down, like a child who has just had her wrist slapped. She would slip her hand under her thigh as if to hold it there, but it never stayed for long.
Summer tapped her fingers, magnifying the image just as Ela raised her hand again to scratch. Her nail picked at a minute, gray LOV. It popped free. A tiny spot of blood welled up where the LOV had been.
Summer’s heart rate jumped. Sweat prickled her skin. What she had just seen should not be. Symbiotic LOVs were fragile, yes, but they could not be removed by gentle scraping. She zoomed in closer.
Ela’s LOVs had all lost their healthy blue-green color, fading to a pearly gray. Summer had seen this before. When she’d examined the LOVs on Panwar’s corpse, they had looked like this. The conclusion was inescapable: Ela’s LOVs were dying, flaking away beneath the compulsive scratching of her fingernails.
But how was that possible? None of the viruses released by the IBC should have affected the symbiotic LOVs. Daniel had been adamant about that, and Summer had done everything she could to ensure it. Ela’s LOVs could not be dying.
Yet they were … and Ela knew it. See how she stared at the wall with dull, unfocused eyes, fear painted in a sheen across her smooth face? Panic lurked just beneath the surface.
“Dr. Goforth?”
The soft query startled Summer from her speculations. With a shaking hand she slipped her farsights off, turning to see a crew member in cream coveralls leaning past the door to peer into the conference room. “A package for you, Dr. Goforth, to be delivered upon arrival.” He opened the door wider, presenting her with a small carry-case, twelve by six by four inches high, perforated with air holes all around its upper half. Something scurried and scratched within it as he set it on the table. She signed his pad and he withdrew, while she read the specimen tag fixed to the handle. Nothing had been written on the line describing the contents of the box; only time and place of collection had been recorded. On the back of the tag though, scrawled in indelible pen, was an additional note: LOVs on fish surviving too.
Summer peered through the air holes, but it was dark inside the box. All she could see was the blue-green glow of a patch of healthy LOVs.
VIRGIL’s forehead itched madly as the outer shells of his LOVs flaked away one by one. He didn’t want to call attention to it. He didn’t want to give anything away. So he refused to scratch. Instead he sat hunched in a hard steel chair at one end of a small table in an equally small room, his hands tucked under his armpits and tears of agony standing in his eyes, trying to follow the endless questions of the two IBC officers assigned to interview him. They kept asking him about the LOVs: how he controlled them (if he did control them); what his long-term plans had been; what potential he saw in the LOVs; how he felt now. It always came back to that: How do you feel?
I’m frightened and angry. Why did you murder Ky?
How do you feel?
I’m tired. I want to sleep.
He was hungry too, but then he was used to being hungry, so he didn’t bother to mention it.
How do you feel?
I’m tired. I don’t want to talk anymore.
After a while he lost the thread of the conversation. His focus shifted inward. He searched his mind, looking for blank spaces, for some sign that the LOV asterids were dying along with their outer shells. He had lived with the LOVs so long, he thought he would know if even one failed. But he could find no blank spaces. Calmness continued to flow on command and when he returned his attention to his interrogators, he could discern in their faces the subtle telltales that let him see through to the emotions behind their professionally expressionless pose.
How do you feel?
THE door of the conference room slammed open with criminal force. Summer jumped. Then she tapped her fingers to clear her farsights, before turning an angry gaze on Daniel Simkin.
He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. “You fucked up. Their LOVs are dying.” His farsights were opaque silver. His face was stony.
Summer could remember when seeing the LOVs die had been his goal. When had that changed? And why? “It’s not my doing.”
“Like hell it’s not. We introduce your viruses, and within hours their symbiotic LOVs are dead. That’s a pretty clear cause and effect.”
She stood up. She had persuaded a crew member to bring her a large plastic box with tall, smooth sides. She’d set it on the table, and released the live specimen into it. Now she gazed down at the gray rat as it shivered in a corner, its helmet of LOVs gleaming healthy blue-green. “Why aren’t you worried about the rats, Daniel? And the parasitized fish? None of my viruses did any harm to them.”
He glanced into the box. Then he looked back at her. “Where did you get that?”
“Someone with the UN sent it to me. You haven’t controlled these wild LOVs, Daniel.”
He smiled. But it wa
s a reptilian smile, without a hint of warmth. “We didn’t know LOVs were living symbiotically with wildlife until this morning.”
She gestured at the rat. “These LOVs weren’t harmed by my viruses.”
He snorted. “So the rat-symbionts are safe. Congratulations. But it was the humans I wanted to protect.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “My viruses did not do this. I suggest you look elsewhere for a cause.”
“Elsewhere? What are you implying? The UN … ?”
“No, of course not. What does the UN know? But have you bothered to ask Copeland what’s going on?”
VIRGIL was escorted to a conference room, one big enough to hold an oval table and six chairs. A twilight illumination came from a trough of indirect lights around the ceiling. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he was startled to discover Summer Goforth present, seated beneath a wall clock identifying the time in Hanoi as just past midnight. He was less surprised to see Daniel Simkin.
The rest of the chairs were empty, but on the table itself was a large plastic box. “Go ahead,” Simkin said, gesturing him forward. “Have a look inside.”
A rat scuttled around the bottom of the box. In the dusky light its head glowed bright with a blue-green skullcap of LOVs. Virgil looked from Summer, to Simkin, then back again to the rat, fascinated by the creature. “Is it supposed to simulate one of us?”
Simkin shrugged. “Not exactly.”
“How long ago did you implant the LOVs?”
“We didn’t implant them. This specimen was found on the reservation this morning. You’re not familiar with the phenomenon?”
“No.”
“Its LOVs are healthy,” Summer said.
Virgil felt the hard clutch of fear. The deck lifted and rolled beneath his feet, swayed by typhoon winds as he turned to meet her gaze. No professional mask of detachment hid her emotions. The suspicion in her eyes was easy to read. “Your LOVs are dying,” she went on. “We’d like to know why.”
He forced himself to look away. Had she guessed? No. How could she? He closed his eyes, calling on a state of calm. “You ask me why? When the poisons you released this morning—”