by Mark Budz
“They jack into Intensive Care Modules and use them as temporary life-support.”
A queasy dread descends on Fola. It’s not going to work. She can’t think of any way to bring the refugees onto the station without putting the workers at risk.
She looks for Ephraim. But she can’t make out faces, they are too small, and her thoughts are a tangle, too tightly knotted to see clearly.
“There’s been a complication with Lejandra,” the IA says after a pause. “Sniffers have identified an unregistered pherion on her.”
She closes her eyes, lets out a breath, and reopens them. “What kind of pherion?”
“An antipher to one of the security pherions that guards the outer perimeter of the work camp.”
“Any idea where it came from, or how Lejandra picked it up? Is it related to the quanticles?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Show me.” It might be nothing. But right now, it’s all she’s got.
Twelve hours. Enough time to send and receive one message. After that, all bets are off.
Back in the adobe-walled courtyard, the saguaro that represents Lejandra’s clade-profile seems more withered, more skeletal. “What am I looking for?” Fola squints at the umbrella palms, scruffy circuitrees, barrel cacti, and bougainvillea atop the wall. Avoids looking at the snakes.
Pheidoh steps out of a nearby shadow. The IA is dressed in its familiar khakis and pith helmet. It pulls out its magnifying glass and inspects a low-hanging branch on one of the circuitrees. A moment later a datawindow opens in front of her to display the magnified representation of an insect.
“Is this the sniffer?”
The IA consults a private datawindow. “It’s called a snaphid.”
The ’sect looks like a cross between a snail and an aphid. Instead of legs, it has a half dozen amoebalike feet. Its mouth is a nubbed needle-thin proboscis, which it uses like a cane to feel its way along and spear the occasional rogue molecule.
“Was it here before?” Not that she would have noticed unless Pheidoh pointed it out to her.
“No. It was recently introduced to this particular clade.”
“By the politicorp?”
“No.” Pheidoh lowers the magnifying glass and the datawindow vanishes. “The Bureau of Ecotectural Assimilation and Naturalization.”
“Why BEAN?”
“Guest worker programs provide a convenient place for fugitives to hide and illegal pharmers to operate. They are also used by anticorpocracy orgs to gain access to certain clades.”
“You mean like the ICLU?”
“And the Fun Da Mentalists.”
The Fun Da Mentalists are fringe anarchists who seem to have no coherent plan to subvert the dominant paradigm other than the occasional random act of social disobedience and ecotectural sabotage. “So you think the sniffer was introduced to search for refugees and saboteurs.”
“Right. Black-market pherions or antisense blockers they might be using to mask their presence.”
Fola dents her lower lip with her teeth. “Is it possible the pherion was designed to hide the existence of the programmable matter?”
“By Bloody Mary, you mean?”
“That might explain why it suddenly showed up,” she says. “Why it wasn’t found earlier.”
“It’s possible,” the IA allows, “but not likely. The pherion doesn’t appear to have a softwire component.”
So there would be no way to remotely download it.
Pheidoh blows on the snaphid, which drops from the limb. “A more probable scenario is that the pherion is so new it slipped under radar. Or that it was manufactured shortly after the braceros arrived.”
“By who?”
“That’s what BEAN is trying to find out.”
“The bruja,” Fola says. It has to be. She came from Front Range City and was in direct contact with Lejandra. It would have been easy for her to bring it with her.
“Not necessarily.” The IA rubs the back of its neck with one hand and squints up at an invisible sun. “One other possibility is that Lejandra came into close physical proximity with someone else who entered the camp illegally in the last few hours.”
Normally most pherions couldn’t be transmitted through the air. They were too heavy, and had to be injected or sniffed. But, like any virus-based drug, some of them could be spread by a sneeze or a cough.
“What’s going to happen to Lejandra now?” If there’s one thing BEAN is famous for, it’s not turning a blind eye.
The datahound pinches its lower lip, gives it a contemplative tug. “A full biomed scan is being run on her. It’s being performed remotely, so it will take a while to get the results. In the meantime, BEAN is putting together a list of persons of interest. Workers they want to question.”
“Can’t they just release more sniffers? Isolate the source?”
“So far the pherion hasn’t shown up anywhere else in the camp, or in anyone else. It seems to have disappeared.”
Gone underground, Fola thinks. Into hiding. Which pretty much indicates that it’s not related to the quanticles or the ecotectural collapse. It’s specific to Lejandra. Something about her.
Pheidoh cocks its head to one side, as if listening intently.
“What?” she says.
“There’s a new transmission from L. Mariachi. Streamed from a security bitcam array.”
A translucent datawindow opens, the pane static-filled. Gradually, the blizzard of pixels clears, assembles into a bird’s-eye view of a deserted street. The hardpan is littered with bits of trash. Potted umbrella palms slouch in front of garish adscreens pasted to the cheap lichenboard facades of VRcades, shops, and restaurants. It’s night—or rather, early morning. The predawn sky in the east is starting to lighten, almost as bright as the halogen-blighted horizon to the west.
L. Mariachi is alone, propped against the biolum-washed wall of a dance club called Phallacies. He clutches the guitar unsteadily to his chest, as if he’s staggering under an enormous load.
“Is he drunk?” she asks.
“In pain,” Pheidoh says. “At the time of the transmission, he wasn’t authorized to receive a painkiller for his hand.”
It hurts to look at him. His features are a delirious amalgam of mascara black shadows and harsh cyanosis blue. Oxygen starved. The glow from the blue liquid crystal dancer above the entrance to Phallacies flickers at regular intervals, a tremolo effect that gives his movements a jerky quality.
He pushes himself off the wall, stumbles away from the dancer. Then Fola hears her own voice, vibrant in the cool air: Who is the song for?
The words stop him. He stares down at the guitar, then turns toward the lewd dancer and falls on his knees, eyes uplifted, in an act of supplication. Fola’s knees throb with the remembered ache of her own pleas for strength or forgiveness.
“You want me to play again. Is that why you’re here? Is that why the bruja gave me the guitar?”
Her voice loops back, transmitted through the guitar: You must have written it for a reason.
The time delay is disconcerting. She knows the questions ahead of time . . . which triggers disorienting moments of déjà vu while she’s waiting to hear his responses.
“Why now?” he asks. “After all these years?” Then, “Wait.” Raising one hand. “Don’t go.” He picks up the guitar, coaxes out a plaintive chord. “I’ll wait for you this time. I promise.”
Fola’s stomach crimps. She turns to Pheidoh. The IA has morphed into a bearded, bespectacled bohemian and is gazing at the datawindow as if deconstructing an abstract painting.
“Suggestions?” Fola asks. She doesn’t know what, if anything, the Blue Lady means to L. Mariachi at this point in his life. The last thing she wants to do is say the wrong thing, make him angry or depressed, to the point where he refuses to have anything more to do with her. If she’s not careful, she could do more harm than good.
The datahound combs its beard with pensive, long-nailed fingers. “Don
’t answer.”
“You want me to play hard to get?”
“You’ve already asked him to play. If you ask him again, he might resent it or get suspicious.”
The strategy seems risky. She turns back to the five-hour-old image. L. Mariachi is still on his knees. “Do you know where he is now?”
“A sea sponge vat. That’s his scheduled work assignment.” The IA opens a second datawindow, which hangs next to the first like a companion piece in an art gallery. “This is interesting.”
In Fola’s experience “interesting” is probably the single most ominous word in the world.
“What?” she says when the datahound isn’t immediately forthcoming. All she can see are a few squiggly lines of partially decrypted ciphertext.
“The Bureau is sending a pair of agents to the biovat pharm.”
“In person?” Fola has never seen a BEAN investigator in-vivo. From everything she’s heard, she never wants to. Their rabidity is legendary.
“Two of them.” The datahound wrinkles its nose. “Rose and peacock.”
“Is that necessary?”
“They always travel in pairs. Usually, but not always, color coordinated.”
“What I mean is, that seems pretty extreme, sending them in-vivo. What are they going to do?”
“Intimate people.”
“You mean intimidate?”
“Only if they positively ID a suspect. Until then, the preferred modus operandi is to use indirect pressure to obtain information.”
Whatever that means.
“Often,” Pheidoh says, noticing her uncertainty, “the threat of physical force is all that’s required to beat the truth out of someone.”
“How thoughtful.” As a relief worker, she occasionally saw the victims of mental torture. Refugees and indentured workers like Xophia who would risk permanent injury or death rather than go back to worse.
The IA nods in apparent agreement. “The Bureau works hard to project an image of restraint.”
Hard to tell if the IA’s serious or echoing her sarcasm. “How soon will the agents get there?” she asks.
“Approximately fifty minutes. They’re currently en route from FRC.” Less than an hour. Not nearly enough time to send a warning.
“Do the workers at the vat pharm know they’re coming?”
“No. Surprise is also part of the information gathering strategy.”
20
PREDICTA ABSURDUM
Rexx focuses on the screen of the Predicta, dials in the frequency and waits for the White Rain to drench him.
Nothing. Not even a sprinkle. He cranks up the volume and tries again, with the same result. He tries a third time, but the riboswitch refuses to flip.
The temporary reclade pherion. It has to be. It’s interfering with the RNA.
He pushes his eyescreens onto his forehead and digs at the blossom of pain behind his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.
The boy standing on the split-rail fence is clearer. Rexx can make out the color of his hair, blond, and the longhorn stitch on the back pockets of the Rhinestone Blues jeans.
The woman is clearer too, blue suede jacket and spotless white hat emerging from the static as she draws closer and the blizzard thins. Bright red lipstick picture-framing a proud smile.
He can’t look . . . but can’t tear his eyes away. He knows what’s coming, but there’s no way to stop it. No way to change the station. His memory is wired to one channel. All he can do is close his eyes.
“Dad,” Mathieu said, “can we go to the rodeo on Saturday? Please?”
“No.”
Mathieu’s lips trembled, hurt and angry, as if he’d been slapped. “Why not? A lot of kids from school are going.”
“Because I said so.”
Mathieu’s eyes brimmed. His enthusiasm faltered. “But Mom promised. . . .”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I ain’t your mother.”
The tears retreated to higher ground. The pout hardened into resentment. Mathieu turned—“I hate you! You never let me do anything!”—and ran to his room.
That night, lying in bed, Jelena touched a hand to Rexx’s arm, resting her fingers on him the way she did piano keys. Lightly, delicately, but with absolute self-assurance and control. “I know you don’t want to expose him to the same things your father exposed you to. For good reason. But don’t you think it’s time he started deciding for himself what he does and doesn’t want to do?”
Rexx knotted the bedsheets in one hand. “Forget it. He’s not going to a rodeo.”
The pressure of her fingers increased. “Then you’re going to lose him. The same way your father lost you.”
His cheeks flushed. “Not the same way.”
“A different way, then. The result will be the same. Is that what you want?”
Rexx shut his eyes. He couldn’t identify the notes she played on his arm. Kernis, maybe. Or Messiaen. “No,” he finally said.
“It’ll be fun.” Jelena stroked his forearm. “Trust me. It won’t kill him. You’ll do more harm if you don’t let him go. . . .”
Hands trembling, Rexx checks on the rack of petri dishes he’s set up to culture the biopsy samples.
So far he’s got Macabro, the Silver Skeleton’s sugar skull grinning up at him from pink aspic. Another pan de los muertos sporoid. Cassa Nova’s ruby-fruit lips, juicy and ready to burst. If he plants a kiss on the petals, Rexx gets the impression they’ll smooch him back just as pretty as you please. Then there’s ginseng Barbie impersonating Raggedy Ann, dressed in the yarn hair, pinafore, and striped stockings that he remembers from his mother’s antique doll collection. Hundreds of shelved eyes, arranged in floor-to-ceiling rows, staring out at him, unblinking.
His hands shake in the gust of dead memories from his childhood.
There doesn’t seem to be a pattern to the ersatz mutations. No indication where the mothballed images are coming from or how they’ve been coded into the architext of the ecotecture.
“You find a DNA sequence yet for Raggedy Barbie?” he asks Hjert’s IA, Warren Peace.
“There isn’t one,” the IA says.
“Come again.”
“There’s no genetic component in the sample.”
“Then what the hell’s causing it to grow? What’s it made of?” He can’t seem to think straight. The inside of his skull is a hollow abscess, dry, feverish, infected.
The IA says nothing. It seems to resent being outsourced, is even more terse than Claire. The loss of Ida is wearing on him, a carbuncle of longing that matches the absence of the White Rain. The need, the cell-deep hunger, is the same. He craves the interactive piece of software as if it were a physical part of him that’s been amputated.
Just what is it about Claire that is habit forming? Their relationship—if it can be called that—leaves a lot to be desired. For one thing, outside of the interface with his biomed sensors and molectronics, there’s no intimate physical contact. Second, the IA is cold, distant. Maybe it’s just mirroring his self-imposed exile, reflecting back the isolation it sees according to some heuristic or mimetic subroutine that’s designed to put him at ease, make him feel better. On the upside, it’s dependable. It might not have much of a heart, or a soul, but it’s always there for him. Which is a lot more than can be said for some people. Pathetic as that is on his part, it counts for something.
Rexx pinches the bridge of his nose. “Any idea what’s causing this crap?” he asks Warren. “Where it’s coming from?”
He still doesn’t know if the source of the failures is external or internal. If the ecotecture has been infected via softwire download to the plants, through direct physical exposure to a mutagen, or if it was an accident, the result of an internal bug or error. Given the way that the mutation is manifesting, the images it’s generating, a design or production flaw seems unlikely. He’s fairly confident Barbie and Raggedy Ann weren’t part of the original project specifications. That makes it hard to believe the problem is the r
esult of a random act of nature or coincidence. Which still leaves the barn door wide open for ineptitude. Or mischief.
And he still has no idea what he found during the autopsy. The lab isn’t equipped with a CNT sensor. He can’t cut into the culture specimens directly.
“Assuming the softwire link to Mymercia is still down,” Rexx says, “and that the ecotecture is effectively offline, it seems reasonable to conclude that the datastream responsible for the mutation is local.”
“Or that it was downloaded earlier and is only now being implemented,” the IA says, board stiff. “The molectronics in the warm-blooded plants are still fully functional. Executing new instruction sets.”
Converting digital data into chemical analogs. Altering DNA, and manufacturing proteins. Rexx returns his attention to Cassa Nova’s blossoming lips. What he’s seeing is digital information taking on physical form, adapting the strategy of biological information to migrate from an in-virtu environment to an in-vivo one. A kind of phase change, virtuality to reality. The way water vapor condensed, changing from a gas to a liquid.
“Is there an identifiable trigger?” he asks. “Something we can point to, at or near the time of the accident?”
“No. But the event might appear to be normal activity. If that’s the case, it could take a while to identify.”
The corners of Rexx’s mouth sag. What he’s looking at is the symptom of the problem. What he needs to nail down is the cause. Not only the physical cause, but the reason behind it. If there is a reason.
“Have you been able to come up with any discernible pattern to the growth we’re seeing?” he says.
“You mean a connection between the images?”
“Right. Some common thread that ties them together.” He has no clue what that might be. But if they can come up with a common denominator, maybe they can get to the bottom of what’s going on. Get some idea of where things are headed and what they can expect.
“I’ll set up a relational database.”
“Be sure to include symbolic information as well as visual and textual data in any cross-reference comparisons.”