Gorgon Child

by Steven Barnes

  Good man, McMartin thought.

  But that was what it would take. A lot of good, hard men, willing to do whatever it took to make this country great again.

  Whatever it took.

  Chapter Four

  His Bones the Bars

  Wednesday, May 17

  "—This is the beauty, the strength, the glory of our accomplishment—''

  "—The world beyond cannot, will never understand—" "—removal of the primitive gonads. Removal of a quantity of the third germ layer, that which lies between the ectoderm and entoderm. Called the mesenchyme, this undifferentiated tissue gives rise to the urogenital system, the lymphatic system, the heart—"

  Medusa-16 sat in the darkened arena, passively absorbing the four tracks of sound, eyes closed even though brilliant images flashed through his mind. The computer leads tapping into his skull provided sound and image, fed information more quickly and efficiently than any form of reading or aural input.

  He existed in a realm outside ordinary time, ordinary sensation. 16, with a dozen of his "brothers," was deep in Alpha-Theta synch, assimilating raw computer input.

  The headset synchronizer monitored his brain waves, dominating them with pulses of light and sound, forcing them into the most favorable rhythms for effortless learning.

  The images were absolutely real, in color and depth and sensation. He felt the flash of cold as a male fetus's temperature was lowered to near freezing. Felt the pressure of the knife blade as cells were trimmed away, removed to a sterile growth chamber. And there (with a perfectly timed trill of beta rhythms)

  16 felt a surge of pride as the cells were hormonally stimulated into a new fetus, this one female.

  The tiny, pulsing curl of pink flesh grew in time-lapse, so real that 16 could have reached out to touch, to feel, to wonder. The thought alone gave 16 any angle he wished, examining, searching, struggling to understand this, the next step in the Project.

  Tissue, mesenchyme tissue, was implanted in the belly of the first fetus. A sliver of semipermeable membrane separated it from the rest of the body. And here, the whisper of voices rose back to his consciousness:

  "—Such a miracle, such an unparalleled act of creation—" "—There are those who would destroy you, as you were rejected by your parents, hated by the parents who should have loved—"

  "—membrane will allow nutrients in and wastes out, while simultaneously projecting the hormonal milieu to continue the development of the second set of internal and external genitals—"

  16 remembered the rest. That membrane would dissolve soon after birth, to allow sharing of hormones. The result? An artificially created, bi-fertile hermaphrodite with two ovaries, two testes.

  16 took pride: he had not been created, merely modified. His ovaries were his, although his vagina had been created by the stroke of a scalpel. He was special, special in mind and body, due partially to the effects of Cyloxibin, and partially to the regimen imposed by the NewMan doctors and trainers, under the watchful eye of Quint.

  Soon, 16 would be told why. Told the secrets that would make the world fit together as a cohesive whole. Until then, 16 would grow, and learn, and practice the arts of death. And dream . . .

  The framework of steel and plastic rose thirty floors above the wet, glistening streets of Los Angeles. For the present, it was nothing but a maze of girders riveted together at right angles. There were no walls, no floors save for small square elevator landings for the twin lifts.

  For now, the high-rise was mere bones. The flesh would knit later.

  Aubry Knight stood at the very top, at the crosspoint of two naked steel and magnesium beams. The wind plucked at his hair, the rain chilled his skin through his light jacket. Peering west he could see out over the Maze, lit now by the orangish radiance of the setting sun.

  Four years ago, the Great Los Angeles Quake had ripped through the inner city, leaving torn flesh and shattered dreams in its wake.

  The firestorm that followed had done more damage than the original quake. Businesses fled west to the beaches, and south as far as San Diego. Ten square miles of central Los Angeles was simply cordoned off. The poor and the homeless gravitated there like silt settling through water. Ten months later, the Maze had been proclaimed the worst and most shameful ghetto in the United States.

  To the east and west, the gleaming skeletons of new buildings rose from the ruins. From three hundred feet above street level, he could see them clearly. They seemed a menagerie of magical creatures awakening to phantasmal life.

  But if he closed his eyes, he was back in the caves, back in Death Valley's underground hell. His blood roared with apomorphine. Nausea was a gripping fist: squeezing, emptying his stomach again and again. The faces of the men who had raped his mind flared like bonfires in the deepest night. There was no escape from them, no escape from the prison he carried within him: his dreams the walls and warden, his bones the bars.

  The steel beneath his feet vibrated as one of the elevator cars rose up the side of the building. It jostled to a halt, revealing one of Aubry's chief advisors, Leo Baker.

  The organizational genius didn't walk out along the naked girder. He merely stood at the elevator deck as the doors closed and it sank back out of sight.

  Aubry saw Leo, but didn't acknowledge. He breathed deeply, let the adrenaline purify him, drive the goddamned dreams farther underground. He was tired. Soon he would have to sleep.

  Finally he spoke. "What's the news, Leo?"

  Leo was the shorter of Aubry's two lieutenants. He was a round man with a wrinkled face that bore so many scars that at times it appeared quilted. He peered down through the webbing of girders, and looked a little green. "Bloodeagle and the NewMen made their way out. They have a cell in San Diego. They'll be safe for the time being."

  "Righteous." Aubry crossed the beams as if strolling across a sidewalk. Leo watched him nervously, chewing at a thick wad of tobacco. He almost swallowed it as Aubry jumped from one girder to another, spun and balanced. He grinned at them.

  "Ah, boss ..." Leo flinched. "Do we have to talk about it up here? Why don't you come on down ...?'

  "I like it up here." Aubry laughed flatly. "The tunnels get close." He jumped up and gripped one of the overhead beams. For a moment he pretended that his fingers slipped on the wet steel. He dangled from one hand. He was tired. Why the hell wouldn't his body feel the fatigue? It was as if the mind was one creature, the flesh another. "Go ahead. Tell me about the haggling?"

  "The contractors offered fifty percent. Pacific Construction has to pull at least half of their work force from within the Maze, or through the Scavengers." Leo forced a smile as Aubry handwalked the underside of the beam. "We got the license while nobody wanted it. Now that business is moving back in . . .

  "We owe you a lot, Aubry. You, and Promise."

  Aubry's face creased bitterly. "Yeah, right. Me and Promise." He dropped down to the beam, his footing as secure as suction cups on glass. He was silent for a while, looking out and up into the night. The rain pattered against his face, but he didn't blink. Aubry Knight stood there as if he had grown out of the girder, as if he shared a unity with the elements.

  "You're one of us."

  Aubry's face held no answers, but seemed sad. The vigor and false gaiety dissolved. What there was in its place was something that bit more fiercely than the wind.

  "I died in Death Valley," Aubry answered numbly.

  "Let it go, Aubry. For God's sake."

  He pointed up into the night sky. "Up there, man. Right now, while we're talking. Men are Nullboxing. Someone's getting ready to go against the champ. I can't ever do that. I was born to do that. It's all I can do, really—"

  "That's bullshit. You've expanded Scavenger operations north and east—"

  "Promise did all of that. I just sat and nodded my head, man. I don't have the skull for that kind of stuff. I teach a few drills, lead the work crews sometimes . . . you need her more than you need me—" Suddenly his face and vo
ice changed. "Hey, forget it. Just brooding, you know? Go on down. I won't be long." Leo retreated from the cold. The elevator gate clanged behind him.

  Slowly Aubry's head dropped. Perhaps he didn't deserve the stars, the ultimate escape from Earth's jealous grip. Never would he pit his skills against other Nullboxers.

  He hadn't been a fighter. He'd been a killer, and it was no use trying to pretty that behind labels.

  A soldier in Luis Ortega's ungodly army. A skulker in darkness, the evil will of a twisted mind made flesh. And the more that Aubry struggled to free himself from that web, the tighter it clutched at him. . . .

  He had tried to leave, to find legal outlet for his awesome skills. But before he could even complete his Nullboxing training, Luis came after him.

  What followed nearly destroyed his remaining humanity. Years in the worst prisons in America. His only friends had been brutally murdered. His efforts to avenge them led him to a chair in an empty room with a holoscreen, and smiling doctors who grafted a crippling, reflexive nausea onto his anger. More betrayals, more double crosses. And, after he escaped, another web of lies that led to an inescapable confrontation with his tormentors.

  And at the end, Luis Ortega was dead, the Family itself in ruins. All it had cost was hundreds of innocent Scavengers.

  We owe you a lot, Aubry. . . .

  What a joke. Even when he tried to do something positive, distributing Cyloxibin free to the public, it had backfired hideously.

  Hell. He didn't even know why he was still alive. Why he had been born with such a twisted, savage skill. Why his strength and speed and pain thresholds were so much greater than those of other men.

  Why he lived on when better men preceded him into the great darkness.

  The second elevator gate folded back and Promise was there.

  She was tall for a woman, but her eyes barely came to his chin. Her hair was shoulder-length, and trailed dark inches beneath her rain cowl. Sometimes she made it stand up away from her head, and sometimes it fell in an ebon cascade. Occasionally it still sparkled when she was happy, or mischievous. Most especially when she danced.

  He came to her, walking along the beam as if it were a sidewalk. She folded him into her arms, and together they looked out over the city. The sun was setting out behind the Century Towers fifteen miles west. The new central business district. It was there that the nerve center of Los Angeles had fled after the quake and economic collapse.

  The sunset was a thing of dense, broken clouds, splashed with burnt umber. The first few stars already twinkled in the gloom. A few lights flared in the skeletons of the new buildings. To Aubry, the night seemed especially beautiful, and that thought depressed him as well. So many lives gone. So many eyes closed, never to see another sunset.

  And Aubry Knight lived on.

  He squeezed her. For the ones who had gone before.

  "Come down for communal supper, Aubry." Her voice was golden to him. He should have felt warm. Safe.

  Why the chill?

  "Thinking about Nullboxing?"

  He nodded.

  She pressed herself against him more tightly.

  "Come down." The wind plucked at her hair, and as he bent to kiss her again, the left side of her face sparkled. He tried not to notice die diminution of color and shape control that had once come so easily to her. When he concentrated on what he had, as opposed to what he had lost, it eased the pain.

  "Let's go," he said finally, and together they entered the elevator.

  It jostled once, then began to sink. They shared it in silence. An uneasy mixture of joy and sorrow welled within Aubry, and he was unsure which was winning the battle.

  The elevator hit the street level and paused. Aubry thumbprinted the optical scan and the lift continued to sink.

  The municipal construction men could not enter the private Scavenger tunnels.

  "We can't hold this," Promise said softly. "The city's coming back. The utilities and maintenance people have returned."

  "We've got some rights."

  Promise squeezed him tightly. "I've done everything I could. The Scavengers will end up owning property here. Legal ownership. The lawyers will get richer than we will, but we won't end up destitute. You didn't think that they could live down in the tunnels forever, did you?"

  Aubry sighed as the elevator continued to sink. "I know. I'm just not looking forward to it, that's all. Crazy, isn't it? We fought like hell to make us legit, and now I'm afraid of it happening."

  The platform jostled to a halt, and the face of a tall, moonfaced man greeted them. His face could have held another nose without seeming crowded at all. Aubry said "Quarry," and embraced his lieutenant. "I didn't expect to see you back from San Diego so quickly. Did all of them make it?"

  "The Minotaur didn't. He had lost too much blood."

  Aubry nodded. "At least he didn't die in one of the camps. And the rest of them?"

  "Fine." He tore a scrap of paper off his clipboard. "We barter for these medical supplies tomorrow. We need antibiotics, and a new ultrasound modulator. If you can find the components at Free Market, I can cobble it together. I'd prefer that. I don't feel comfortable when the government has a complete inventory of our assets."

  Aubry laughed. "Can't imagine why." He folded the paper and slipped it into his pocket as he got into the cart. With a slight bump, it set off along the track.

  "Legitimate. It's hard to believe, isn't it?" He smiled wistfully. "I wish Warrick were here to see it."

  "This was his dream," Promise said. Aubry turned to look at her, sighing at the long cool curve of her neck, the fineness of her nose and eyes. They combined the sensitivity of an Asian with the raw sensuality of African features. If nothing else, if no other part of his life had ever amounted to anything, this glorious woman's love compensated for a world of disappointment.

  The cart passed the former living quarters of the Scavengers. In these side rooms, twisted corridors, and dark vaults beneath subterranean Los Angeles, the battle against the Ortegas had raged.

  Quarry clucked worriedly. "We found another clutch of squatters."

  "Not a real concern," Promise said. "Take a note to cut back on work in the Sears building. The Reclamation Code of '25 gives us the right to the Mall. That is it. Aubry doesn't want to sink time and energy into rebuilding what we can't hold. Right, hon?"

  He heard her, but the words seemed far off, tinny echoes. The city is coming back. What the hell happens to me?

  "Aubry? Did you hear me?" Quarry and Promise exchanged glances, and Aubry only caught their expressions out of the corner of his eye. They were worried about him, and he wasn't surprised.

  He was worried, too.

  It was wonderful to see the life, the vitality and enthusiasm in the tunnels. Goods were being ferried in from the market, purchased with Scavenger labor. Kevin Warrick's original promise to employers and employees was still alive, still simple and consistent: an honest day's work for an honest day's pay.

  The Scavengers operated on a simple principle: anyone who was willing to work, could work. Compensation in goods, services, cash, or trade union Service Marks depended entirely upon the intensity, duration, and quality of individual efforts.

  The Scavengers represented hope. The City of Angels had abandoned her heartland and fled west to the beaches and south along the coast, creating a new business district rather than bothering to rebuild what had been.

  No longer did Scavengers live in the dank corridors beneath buildings, although there was still much work to be done there. Now, the rebuilding of Los Angeles was almost finished, and Aubry sought to find training for his people. One day soon the Maze would be an ugly memory.

  It was almost that now: disease and violence no longer made her night streets an abattoir. A few Thai-VI victims still hid in shadowed rooms, but as in other parts of the city, and in other cities all over the world, the dreaded venereal leprosy was almost exclusively confined to camps and isolated security areas. The dreaded Th
ai-VI Spiders no longer haunted the streets, playing their loathsome game of sexual "tag."

  The Maze now had industries other than prostitution and drugs. Still perhaps the worst and most shameful ghetto in America, it was no longer the utter hell that it had been following the firestorm of '24.

  And if a measure of that growth could be attributed to the tireless efforts of Aubry Knight and his partner/mate/ lover Promise, then so be it.

  Aubry looked at her without shifting his head. Damn, she was lovely. An unpleasant question remained: What were they to each other? It was hard to say sometimes. Did he truly feel love, or just the effects of the Cyloxibin mushroom? And was there a difference?

  Or something else? He scanned his past, finding little help there, few images of peace or contentment, let alone affection.

  Then, of course, there was the Dead Zone, where the horrors of Death Valley had warped the locks he kept on his memory, and the raw sewage of his past oozed up around the edges of the seals.

  He didn't want to look. He really didn't. But there was morbid fascination with the endless black halls that closed in on him. With the torn bodies of his friends, crawling eternally in the darkness, their hands outstretched—

  (God, no. Shut that away—)

  —to him, "help us," they say, hands and faces grimed with their own blood. "Help—"

  (In the name of heaven. Anything but that. Even the nausea. He ground his knuckles against his temples, and the faces and voices dissolved into a solution of that dandy universal solvent, self-inflicted pain.)

  The cart lurched to a halt, and Aubry snapped out of his trance. Quarry smiled uncertainly. Promise held out her hand. " Help me from the cart. Pretend you're a gentleman."

  Aubry had to laugh, and the ugly images faded again. For a while.

  "This way, Aubry."

  'The dining room is over at the other end . . ." he protested weakly.

  "It's being remodeled," she said, still hiding that grin.

  "We're meeting over in the Blue Room." Aubry shut down his protest. This was the most beautiful area in the Mall, possibly the loveliest in the entire Maze. When the economy began to work again, when the Mall began to interact with the outside world, then people might come in for gracious meals and shopping. The business offices might thrive again. One day . . .