Now We Are Ten: Celebrating the First Ten Years of NewCon Press

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “That’s six. Just four more for a quorum.”

  Locals already fondly referred to this debris as Zanzara Island – a continually differentiating synthetic body of plastic, algae and biofilms. Owing to the density of stagnant pools, the civic authorities had already granted permission for a research laboratory to test a new strain of genetically modified mosquitoes on the pleats, rolls and folds of matter that shaped its warty back. With climate change pushing tropical diseases ever further northwards, Venetians were at risk of malaria, dengue and yellow fever. The stagnant puddles that scarred Zanzara’s surface had become hatcheries for mutant mosquitoes. Bundles of pointed eggs and tiny breathing tubes punctuated the menisci of these worlds. Yet, most of the creatures metamorphosing inside the egg sacs had been genetically modified. They were not destined to produce new populations of egg-layers but selected to shred the female X chromosome and leave only those that bore the Y hallmark of the male sex alive. In these tiny Byronesque swimming pools the sexual orgy that once guaranteed mosquitoes their dominion over the land never arrived. On sunny days the puddles hummed as newly metamorphosed flies broke from their membranous, eggshells and spread their wings under soft gusts of air. These tiny specs of life were carried like dandelion seeds towards the main island mass of the city. So, season after season, male progeny relentlessly hatched and stumbled on flotsam over the choppy waves to the mainland in search of females. Zanzara’s extraordinary ecology intermingled with Venice’s island of the dead, in a strange dance of sterile ecological eroticism that fed a subversive fertility that deeply entangled life and death. Unlike the vigorous poet, however, the wooing flies were doomed to fail in their mission, leaving the future of their kind at the mercy of a new conspiracy between technology and the subversive forces of the natural realm. Yet, while the proto-island genesis gestured towards natural biological decline, the discarded plastics and the intercellular matrix of algae and biological systems that polluted the lagoon strengthened its subversive epic embryology. These side effects of the Anthropocene even potentiated other ecosystems sheltering fish fry from the gaze of predators and buffering their tiny bodies against the unpredictable and sometimes sudden currents. Gabriella pushed another carefully fabricated island of debris into the lagoon.

  “Seven.”

  Ines paused, and put the book down for a while as a cloud of male mosquitoes drunkenly raided pollen and plant juices from a scrawny, bright yellow weed that had shattered a paving stone on the walkway. She was amused by how Byron portrayed Don Juan as a victim of his sex. In contrast, the poet’s own libido guaranteed he habitually completed the four-and-a-half mile journey from his residence at the Palazzo Mocenigo to the Lido beach across the Lagoon where beautiful courtesans held naked swimming parties. Such an endeavour was quite a commitment to love, particularly at the turn of the 19th century, as the canals were little better than open sewers. Yet such filth did not deter him until he was in a state of utter sexual exhaustion. She glanced over at Gabriella as she floated yet another raft of rubbish into the water, like a tiny boat.

  “Eight.”

  The mutant mosquitos quietly arrived amidst small-scale protest. “No zanzara geneticamente modificate” was spray-painted onto old brickwork on walls and alleyways. In truth, there was never anything to resist. Tiger mosquitos were an uncontrollable plague that filled the strained hospital casualty with antibiotic resistant secondary infection lesions by the score. Malaria warnings were periodically issued despite environmental controls that targeted natural breeding grounds. Just as there was no great ceremony when the engineered eggs were inoculated into the stagnant Zanzara pools at dusk, the moral arguments against the technology were muted. The mutants were actually regarded as a kind of artisan practice, like the glass blowers of Murano. Oxitech scientists based in a laboratory in Marghera skillfully injected very small amounts of DNA into each 1mm long egg. The expensive handcrafted survivors of true-breeding mutants were carefully pipetted up and lovingly incubated in suspension. They were hand-reared to adulthood and guided with soft paintbrushes into compounds to mate with wild type mosquitoes. Those strains that were breeding mutant flies could be detected under dark light with glow-in-the-dark genetic markers. Once a stable line had been engineered, the Oxitech boat was sailed out to the shallow pools of the embryonic island and inoculated with tiny transformed eggs. Although environmental protesters periodically sabotaged the breeding ground, breaking up large areas of the biofilm, lagoon debris and plastic assemblage by driving motor boats through the flotsam, its sheer will to exist and relentless accumulation of debris around San Michele overwhelmed the vandalism. The developing Eco Leviathan continued to thrive.

  “Nine.”

  A fresh gust of wind brought another revelling crowd of male mosquitoes hovering over the raft of an empty plastic bottle to the mainland sniffing the air for signs of females. Crowds of children suddenly appeared with their families, looking for a place to hang out for the evening following a clown over the bridge that drooled a long sausage-shaped bubble from a bucket and makeshift wireframe. They stood bewitched under the soapy rain as the undulating globes fizzed and popped into nothingness with the fading light – like mermaid foam. There never seemed to be time to properly finish anything.

  *

  Gabriella woke excitedly. Pedro had already gone to work and Ines had only just risen, having spent most of the night fighting off abdominal tightness.

  “Zanzara has a new family. Please take me! Please!”

  “We should bring a chain for the child, then”.

  “Don’t be silly. It’s not for people.”

  “Gabriella, whom are you talking to?”

  “It’s not really talking, Ines. It’s a think-thing. Like knowing and feeling all at the same time.”

  “So why do you make words then?”

  “Just habit. I guess.”

  Although the discomfort in her abdomen was growing, Ines gave in to Gabriella’s relentless pleading and sent Pedro their plans by SMS.

  “Going to Zanzara. Won’t be long. Ix.”

  They took the 42 circular vaporetto from the Fondamente Nuove. The child was getting impatient. Ines swayed through the barriers. A tourist couple shuffled along a bench to make room for the pregnant woman. She was already regretting her decision as prolonged pains radiated across her back and lower abdomen. Gabriella clung impatiently to the rails and looked for San Michele on the horizon. Along the busy maritime highway gondoliers cheekily crossed the vaporetto routes. They threaded their way between the moving vessels to boast far better views of the scenery than the cheaper public transport.

  *

  Pedro was wasting his time arguing with the trader. His focus was elsewhere checking his phone for messages from Ines. She’d barely slept and was almost due. He wished Gabriella hadn’t been so insistent in going to San Michele. Ines should have been tougher with her. The conman was gesticulating wildly, his face fracturing into defiant slithers of smiles, which told Pedro that he was very comfortable telling lies.

  *

  Gabriella turned around to Ines and waved joyfully. She could see Zanzara’s puckered back, with its stagnant mosquito pools and newly formed family of biofilms. The light was scattering prettily over their surface, like a swarm of fallen stars.

  A gargantuan wave from a monstrous liner crashed into the ferry, steering it directly into the path of a returning vaporetto. A gondola with a cargo of shrieking tourists nose-dived into the mud. Glass, metal and shards of wood crashed around Gabriella and Ines, as the vaporetto deck split and instantly jettisoned them into the murky water.

  Gabriella did not feel the intrusive cold or wetness of the lagoon. She instinctively scrambled for the surface but the rolling vaporetto mercilessly sucked her back into the muddy waters and held her down.

  Ines felt the contractions strengthen but failed to draw breath. She succumbed to the terrible calm of airlessness as a tiny bloody head began its head-down journey into the murky fluids that no
w swathed them both.

  Stricken by the dreadful sight of her little sister being born to oblivion and the sensation that something was forcing itself into her airways, Gabriella began to count.

  “Ten.”

  She mouthed the numbers with her lips.

  “Ten.”

  Somewhere between peace and another place, Gabriella compelled the Venetian soils forged by her ancestral line to count along with her.

  “Ten.”

  *

  The tradesman’s derisive smirk lingered as Pedro’s attention focused on the police radio announcement, which urgently hissed details and its disgust at the unfolding vaporetto disaster. Those that had not been thrown into the water were already being herded on to other smaller boats and they were already recovering bodies with horribly faded faces. With ashen countenance he sped with his colleagues towards San Michele and began a desperate search among the wreckage for signs of life.

  Ines was not responding to his calls. Her phone was dead.

  “Ines? Gabriella?”

  Pedro caught sight of a shroud-like object. He tugged at the turquoise cloth and recognized it as Gabriella’s favourite shirt. There appeared to be altered blood in the water. As it started to come loose he could make out a child’s figure encased in a strangely translucent film, like bubble wrap. He urgently motioned for assistance and several of his colleagues reached into the murky water.

  “You may not want to see this, mate.”

  The object was offering an extraordinary amount of resistance. Welders were summoned. As the rescue team finally released the strange membranous substance, Pedro could just make out Gabriella’s body. The seaweed like material appeared to be occluding her airways, as if it had suffocated her.

  Another figure wrapped in this substance bobbed suddenly to the surface. It was Ines, shockingly waxen.

  Pedro vomited over the side of the rescue boat.

  “Oxygen, quickly someone! The newborn has not yet drawn breath!”

  The tiny bloody body was still attached to a cling-wrapped umbilical cord.

  “Sit down for God’s sake if you’re going to stay.”

  Gabriella was immediately tipped into the recovery position having been dissected from the biofilm and an attendant medic placed a finger on her neck, shaking her head.

  Blood continued to leak from Ines’ abdomen as she too was released from the dreadful tangle. She fell limp and grey, like a dead fish, onto the deck.

  Defeated, Pedro sunk to his knees and sobbed.

  As he did so, the tiny bundle within the warming blanket began to bawl and as the life-giving breaths restored her, as if she’d been in a deep sleep.

  “Over here! Over here!”

  “Quick! The child! These membranes seem to have stopped water from entering the lungs. Despite the prolonged submersion, she might just have a chance of life.”

  Pedro could not recall just for how long he cried. Or how much was joy – or pain. Yet, the shock and the extraordinary survival of the baby was infectious, as the rescuers too wept in solidarity at the strangeness of the situation.

  As warming blankets were wrapped around the tiny baby, Pedro hugged her tightly as they were shepherded into water ambulances and the midday sun shone joy into the waters.

  The networks of embryonic thought-actions that formed the evolving body-consciousness of the Zanzara Leviathan did not cease but remained vigilant to danger. It flicked water into some of the shallow pools on its puckered surface to top up the quickly evaporating fluid. The artisan mosquitoes were now intrinsic to the nascent creature and would be taken care of as its own.

  Ten Sisters

  Eric Brown

  One

  Revenge is the greatest motivator.

  I escaped from the asylum after months of planning. For eight weeks I had bled myself, little by little, of three litres of blood. That morning at dawn I squeezed through a bathroom window, doused the blood across the cobbles of the alleyway next to the asylum, then fled across London and laid low for a month. There was no press coverage of my ‘death’, of course, but I was confident that the medics at the asylum – and more importantly Anna de Birkenstock – would assume that I was dead. No one could survive losing so much blood, after all. I immersed myself in holo-dramas, dreamed of revenge, and in between times fantasized about taking a colony ship to the stars.

  *

  Then I began my surveillance of Anna de Birkenstock, the millionaire business tycoon, patron of the arts, and the person I most reviled in all the world. She opened hospitals and galleries, appeared in online political debates championing a strict libertarian agenda, and propped up corrupt regimes in far-flung countries to further her business. And all the while, unbeknownst to all but her most intimate aides and clinicians, she planned to live forever.

  A month after my ‘death’, I outfitted myself in the style of body-hugging two-piece Anna favoured, bought jewellery identical to that which she wore, and hired a limousine. On a morning when I knew she was sleeping in after a late-night party, I took the limousine across London to a small, exclusive clinic.

  The security guard took one look at me, smiled obsequiously, and waved me through the swing door. The chief clinician, flustered at the unscheduled arrival, ushered me up to the penthouse suite where the patient slept.

  I told him that for the next thirty minutes I was under no circumstances to be disturbed. Locking the door behind me, I turned and faced the bed.

  The girl pushed herself up on to her elbows and stared at me.

  Her gaze comprised disbelief and fear. I smiled; it was as if I were looking into a mirror, seeing there the tremulous dread I too had experienced when in the presence of Anna de Birkenstock.

  I took her hand; her instinct was to pull away, but I held tight. “I’m not who you think I am,” I murmured.

  Her eyes widened.

  I said, “I am not Anna de Birkenstock.”

  “Then who...?”

  I squeezed her hand. I stared into her face, pale and oval, her hair drawn tightly back like that of a ballerina; she was perfection, and gazing at her it was all I could do not to weep.

  “I escaped,” I said, and told her the truth about herself. “And now I’m taking you away from here...”

  “But the operation?”

  “They lied to you,” I said. “You’re not undergoing it for your own good, but Anna’s... I’ll explain later. Now get dressed.”

  I opened the valise I had brought with me and pulled out a two-piece identical to the one I was wearing, along with an array of jewellery. Dazed, she dressed; I applied lipstick and make-up to her face, and minutes later she was ready.

  “Now listen carefully,” I said. “Take the valise and leave the building by the front exit. Don’t worry. You’ll be fine. They won’t suspect a thing. There will be a taxi waiting outside. Give the driver this.”

  I passed her a card on which was printed the address of an apartment in Chelsea. I gave her a twenty euro note, a key to the apartment, and told her to smile. “I said don’t worry. I’ll see you at the apartment later this evening. You’ll find food in the fridge.”

  She shook her head. “But how will you...?”

  “There’s a rear exit. I’ll slip out minutes after you’ve left. Now go.”

  I hugged her, watched her step from the room, and a minute later checked that the way was clear before making for the access stairway.

  *

  Two

  I hurried from the clinic, changed in a nearby hotel room booked especially for the occasion, and emerged wearing a bright summer dress and high heels. I wore a blonde wig, designer glasses, and a poncho in the latest fashion.

  I took a flier north to Hampstead and rendezvoused with Richard – the junior medic who, six months earlier, had risked his life by telling me the truth. Soon after that I’d made my plans, enlisting Richard’s aid in stealing de Birkenstock’s credit pin for just one hour. That was all the time I’d needed to transfer the funds f
rom her account, the funds which would – in time – subsidize my revenge.

  This was our first meeting since my ‘death’, in case Anna’s people had become suspicious and arranged to have him followed.

  We had to act fast. In the morning, with Anna2’s disappearance, Anna de Birkenstock would lose no time in getting her people to prepare Anna3.

  Richard piloted a flier from the rooftop pad and headed north-east to Suffolk. “Where is she?” I asked.

  “Allenby Hall, just outside Newmarket.” He inserted the flier into the stream of air-traffic heading out of the capital.

  I told him how we would succeed in liberating Anna3, and he listened attentively, his head to one side and his lips pursed. He smiled and reached out to take my hand.

  I changed again when Richard landed in the lane outside the walls of Allenby Hall. By the time he converted the flier to a roadster and approached the imposing iron gates, I was Anna de Birkenstock in person, suited and bejewelled; I had her arrogant demeanour down pat.

  Richard wore a chauffeur’s peaked cap and waited in the drive while I breezed up the steps to the front door and demanded to see Dr Franklin, Anna de Birkenstock’s chief physician.