Gorgon Child

by Steven Barnes

  In the instant it took him to adjust his mind to the shock, a foot arced and hit his gun hand with a move that was timed to perfection. His arm went dead.

  Aubry was ready for the second kick: heelkick/round kick. That was the natural path of hip torque. That was the direction of momentum, and the only option, given that there was so very much follow-through left from the first technique. Without benefit of sight or conscious command, Aubry's body set him up for the counter, a whiplash block against a smaller opponent, followed by a crushing punch to the midsection.

  But the arcing follow-up never came. He couldn't see, and everything was happening too fast. His opponent folded into a smaller target, jackknifed. The kick speared out directly, striking Aubry in the ribs with a sharp exhalation that was perfectly timed with the extension of the leg.

  The blow missed his solar plexus by a fraction of an inch. Aubry rolled, mind numbed with shock. What in the hell was he fighting? All he had felt was bone and movement. It was the most perfectly executed technique he had ever experienced.

  As fast as the kick had been launched, it was retracted twice'as swiftly. Aubry's flashing hands found nothing to grasp.

  He bounded off the wall, managed to get his chin down before a kick intended for his throat smashed into his jaw. Lights exploded behind his eyes.

  But this time he caught the leg as it slithered away. Again, he was shocked again at its lightness. Was he fighting a woman? The leg was smaller and thinner than Jenna's—

  A child?

  He froze, and the moment was gone.

  He grunted as his attacker's body curled in midair, supported by his own grip. The other foot hammered into his chest. It felt like the blow of a sledgehammer, and only Aubry's frantic torquing of the leg saved his life. Landed cleanly, that blow would have killed anything human.

  Aubry staggered back into the wall, tasting blood. Shocked beyond words. Helpless. For two precious seconds he could do nothing but roil in the pain, struggling to find a breath.

  He heard the sound of feet retreating through the darkness. Light feet. A small woman. A child . . .

  Dear God. Was it even human?

  Aubry stumbled to his feet, and spit salt blood. He heard a scream upstairs, and forgot all of his considerations.

  Ariane! He took the stairs three at a time. A man-sized blur at the top of the stairs swung at him with a rifle butt. Aubry didn't even pause, just went through him, went under him in a response that Jenna had used. The attacker wheeled over his shoulder and sailed down the stairs, not making contact with a single one before striking the bottom with a crunch.

  Bullets spattered against the wall. He felt a smashing pain in his right shoulder as he was grazed. He hit the ground and spun back down the stairs, behind the protection of the wall.

  There was another scream, and then the sound of glass breaking on the far end. Smoke. And then quiet.

  Aubry dragged the corpse back up the stairs, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. He heaved it up over the railing.

  Nothing. He took the chance, dashed up, and smashed into the door on the far side of the hall. Nothing.

  Aubry crept out into the hall, then staggered, choking back a throatful of vomit. Shattered glass was everywhere, and mixed in with the slivers were dozens of slippery pink fetuses. Some of them still moved sluggishly in a bloody syrup.

  His eyes burned, and he wiped at them savagely. Something within him wanted to collapse and grieve, but he had to move, had to keep going while he could.

  Three of the women were dead, their bodies twisted and broken. They lay with arms outstretched, as if trying to salvage their nonborn children. The room spun, and Aubry grabbed a bench, steadying himself.

  He moved like an automaton, struggling to remember the business at hand.

  Ariane. Where . . .

  He heard a moan from behind a wall stitched with bullet holes. He thumped the wall with one fist, heard the hollow reply. A bolt-hole: one that hadn't entirely worked. Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, Aubry tore the leg off a table. With an exhalation of "hyahh/" he drove it end-on into the wall, levering and pulling until the edge of the door began to crack. The table leg began to bend with the strain. Aubry set his fingers into the crack, braced his feet against the wall, and pulled with all of the enormous strength of his upper and lower back. The steel bolts groaned, and one of the hinges popped. Panting, Aubry crawled back down, and wedged the bar down farther into the crack, and pulled with the improved leverage. The remaining hinge popped.

  Ariane cowered there, crumpled into a corner. Blood leaked from her chest, and her face was ravaged with pain. She scrabbled at the floor, trying to pull farther away, to back into the wall. One hand lifted feebly, trying to ward him off.

  Sickened, he understood: she thought that he was one of the assassins.

  It had to be the smoke in the air, but tears streamed freely down his cheeks as he bent to lift her. She collapsed into his chest, mumbling, "Jenna. My baby. Get Jenna. . . ."

  And he nodded.

  Bioworks was blazing by the time he got Ariane from the building. Their shadows were flickering ghosts framed by the orange light. Aubry turned, staring back into the inferno as two women eased Ariane from his arms, their eyes shining with an impossible mixture of gratitude and hatred. The entire camp was shattered, burning, and a half-dozen fires smoldered in the forest itself.

  "Where's Jenna?" he asked finally. He was afraid to close his eyes, even for a moment. When he did, the pink shellfish forms of the dying fetuses crawled in the darkness.

  "Out in Marjo. That's the worst. They're trying to draw a line there."

  The shoulder burned like hell, but he couldn't rest. Not yet. "Then that's where I'm going."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Fire Flight

  Northeast of Ephesus, across Trask River on a dirt road sheltered by a stand of trees, the black disk of a hovercraft hunched low on the ground. No lights issued from it, and no sound, but it hummed with activity.

  A motorcycle pulled up, its front wheel juddering in shallow ruts. It slid to a halt. The messenger hopped off, touched his thumb to a telecast card on his chest, and stood very still.

  The air shimmered, and an armored guard appeared from behind-his optical shield. The guard checked the messenger again, then waved the man inside.

  The craft was a honeycomb of narrow passages. The messenger took a left-branching corridor to a tiny room made smaller by its profusion of monitoring equipment. He took off his helmet.

  At the side console, a chair pivoted. Marcel Killinger's gleaming metal jaw inched out from the padded leather, grinning without humor. "Where are the others?"

  "Distributing jelbombs, except for three noncoms."

  "And ...'?"

  "Medusas 2,7, and 12 performed kills, but broke emotionally. Just went crazy. I had to terminate them."

  "The bodies?"

  "Cremated. That's the bad news. The good news is that Medusa-16 was damaged, but performed specplus."

  "What—" The human tissue in Killinger's face twisted with savage pleasure. "Play the memory."

  "Yes, sir." The messenger doffed his helmet. Killinger removed a small cartridge from the side pocket, and slipped it into a playback slot in the blinking console.

  Killinger folded his fingers together, and settled back to watch. "Ephesus." He hissed the word nastily. "Effie bitches." The holostage above the console rippled and flared with color. They watched as the camp's calm dissolved into chaos, as the women and men streamed out from their homes like ants from a shattered nest. They swarmed to their vehicles, to the fire stations in the forests.

  And there . . .

  "Freeze. God damn!" There was no mistaking the enormous figure caught in midstride on the oval. It was Knight. Aubry Knight. Raw animal hatred radiated from the Merc leader, and suddenly the messenger wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere but close enough to be a potential target for Killinger's frustration.

  "Computer." Killinger said i
t in a flat, ugly trisyllable. "Probability that woman Promise is an Effie."

  A string of variables ran across the screen.

  —Coordination +22, Ferris scale.

  —Given highest rating in manipulation of Plastiskin. Abnormal level of autonomic control.

  —57% chance birth certificate falsified by former pimp Jamie Parks in Las Vegas.

  —First 100% verifiable appearance Las Vegas 2016, in company of Jamie Parks. Travel itinerary of Jamie Parks included Oregon within 18 months of first appearance of Promise.

  Probability: 87%.

  Killinger laughed coarsely, and the tension dissolved. The elephant stepped off the messenger's chest.

  "Son of a bitch." Killinger shook his head ruefully. "It was there right in front of us all the time. All we had to do was ask the right questions. Computer: Promise surname?"

  Cotonou. Used once, motel credit receipt, 2016. No other recorded usage.

  Killinger switched modes, and followed the tape image as the assassin entered the main biofacility. The bitches had been taken totally unawares, bullets riddling their bodies before the threat fully registered.

  "Glorious kill," he whispered. The woman Ariane was nowhere to be seen, although she was spotted climbing the stairs to the second level. "Where? Where. . . ?"

  The Medusas were moving through the shadows, childish, somber figures carrying scaled-down machine pistols. Then they broke into the laboratory, the security women froze for an irretrievable second, and the Medusas triggered their weapons. Lead sprayed in a lethal web, smashing into bodies, shattering glass. Blood and fluid splashed explosively around the room. The bodies danced, smashed backward into the shelves and counters, slid twitching to the floor. And were still.

  The Medusas paused. Fetuses slid out of their broken cases, slid down the walls and across the floor, almost to one of their feet.

  Medusa-12 bent, and picked one of the fetuses up, its tiny hands wiggling, mouth opening and closing spastically.

  Suddenly 12 screamed, hurling the slippery thing at the wall where it spattered in a starburst. 12 screamed and screamed, finger pressing the trigger of its machine gun, and then—

  The tape went black.

  "The cameraman was accidentally shot here. This is where we terminated the Medusas."

  Killinger nodded. "All right. More." The images resumed.

  Sounds of crashing, and more gunshots. A frantic turn of the head, and the first glimpse of Aubry Knight.

  Killinger froze the image as Knight bounded up the stairs. "Damn, the man floats when he moves." There was both hatred and grudging admiration in his words.

  "Medusa-16, you said?"

  "Injured, not badly. But injured this man as well, in a one-on-one. We salvaged tape from his helmet."

  Killinger seemed immensely pleased. "Yes. This is good. Very good. We lost three, but we only need three killers. 16 passes. Computer, note: rest and healing for 16 in Los Angeles. He and the others have an appointment next week. Then, return him to the Nation for final evaluation. Register that 16 has passed the very highest graded coordination test. If the other scores match, give 16 final approval for Perseus."

  He swung around in his chair. "Good. Primary is accomplished. We still have the opportunity to accomplish the secondary mission. Do we have a tracer on Knight?"

  "He's headed toward Trask River. That's for sure."

  Killinger stared at the computer input again, finding his strange harmony with it. A three-dimensional grid of Marjo Valley appeared. Glowing red patches represented the fires burning out of control. "I want you to look at this. Tracking says that they're fighting down in the valley, and fighting too damn well. County fire equipment and manpower are controlling the outer edges. The women are building a firebreak along Flint Ridge. Here, where the logging winch operates. They have a lot of expensive machinery, and they're trying to save it. So if we move in behind them here, and firebomb the road and close the gap, the wind will do the rest. They'll be trapped. It will be an hour before the state forces get the go-ahead from federal to expend funds on a fire on private land. More foot dragging as they debate the Effie question. State will expend most of its effort to make sure that the fire doesn't spread to the rest of Tillamook nation. 1 think we can get the whole clitsucking lot of 'em."

  Killinger pulled the video disk from its slot, and crushed it with one hand's slow and steady pressure. His human skin, curling around the unmoving metal of his jaw, smiled beatifically. "Faggotry must be contagious. I wonder why he was wearing a tutu?"

  The bus lurched as it followed the road. The air stank of smoke, although Aubry couldn't see any flame yet. It was almost midnight. He could see no smoke in the sky, but no clouds, either. Women and men lined the roads, resting aching arms for a few moments before going back up to Flint Ridge to continue chopping the firebreak. The bus was filled with replacement firefighters, recruited from outlying allied women's groups. Every able body was needed. Only three hours after the initial alarm, yet the situation was critical.

  A whining sound above him made him look up. The winch was still in operation. The great slab of a cedar log dangled overhead, buoyed by the balloon, creaking and jostling as it headed out of the valley. The Ephesians were still moving a last few logs out of the fire's path. It was coming their way, and it was coming fast.

  The bus screeched to a halt, and the firefighters spilled out. Aubry hit the ground running, and yelled his question to the first group of people he reached. "Where's Jenna?"

  "Top of the hill," a short balding man in overalls panted, pointed. "Working a strip there. Can't fight the fire on the far side: heat rises. Hell to pay if it rips past the crest, though."

  He barely heard the rest of it. He ignored the pain in his shoulder and began to run. He followed the paved road at first, then left it and scrambled up through the brush toward the top of the hill. He was glad he'd taken the precious moments necessary to pull his denims over the leotards: the underbrush would have cut his legs to pieces. Finally, he saw the dirty, weary, soot- and dirt-stained figures trudging back down the hill. On the north side there was smoke and the glow of something that would eat them alive without pausing to either mourn or gloat.

  Above the ridge, an Ephesian transport copter hovered, dumping liquid that burst into foam on contact with the heat. It gave off a horrible, choking stench.

  Up ahead he saw Jenna's wiry body as she worked a teardrop-shaped chain saw, clearing brush. She was greased with sweat, her dungarees blotched in patches as she worked the saw.

  She turned and looked, finally focusing on him. "Aubry. Were you assigned here?"

  "I'm supposed to bring you back. Ariane was shot."

  She killed the saw. "What!?"

  "She's dying." He shrugged helplessly. "She may be dead by now."

  Jenna's eyes glowed. The fire beyond the ridge was cooler, less dangerous than that which Jenna held in check. "She was the target. And the lab." She whipped her head up toward the hissing wall of stinking smoke. "No time for that now. And no time to get back. If that fire breaks the ridge, we'll be in real trouble."

  "Where's Promise?"

  She pointed east. "Last time I saw her. Aubry—we don't have time for play. If you really want to help, this is the time."

  He nodded silently.

  Aubry ran through the underbrush, through the tangle. Branches whipped his face, blinding him, cutting his skin. He spotted Promise on the other side of a rise, with Glenda Wright and a group of six women and one man working to clear a tangle of underbrush.

  "Promise!"

  Confusion and relief mingled on her face. "Aubry. We could use you."

  "Ariane is dying. She needs you there."

  Promise leaned onto her shovel as if it were a crutch, silent, barely seeming to breathe. "She needs me HERE." She finally sighed. "If she dies, she dies. She'd want us to save the valley. I can't go anywhere."

  The wind shifted south, and Aubry was suddenly choked by the stench of fire foam f
rom the far side of the ridge.

  "Shit." Without another word to her he fought his way up the quarter mile to the top of the ridge. Much of it was already stripped and backburned. Chain saws and mini-torches whirred and flared around him as the teams fought their desperate battle.

  Aubry reached the top and looked down, appalled.

  Below, the entire valley was burning. How could anything so massive happen so quickly?

  The brush smoldered with small fires. On the valley floor, trees writhed and died in flame. An Ephesian hovercraft dove into the smoke, dumping and spraying its stinking cargo. Where the fluid touched the flame, the flame died, and Aubry was heartened. But still, an ocean of jellied fire devoured the brush, seemingly more than human agency could quench. Or survive.

  What kind of monsters . . . ?

  And that fire galloped toward them despite all that the firefighters could do. The mass of hot air licked at his skin, burning like an acid wind.

  He slid back down the hill to Promise. "What can I do?"

  She found a shovel for him. "Dig. Here—there. If this brush catches fire, burning chunks will fall downhill, igniting the lower brush as it falls. Fire has all the best of it: hot air on the way up, gravity assist on the way down."

  Aubry glanced at his watch. "We should have help here within the hour."

  "We have to do something now."

  "Got it. I—"

  There was a scream from below them. Aubry turned in time to see the black nightwing of a hovercraft float up over the south ridge of Marjo Valley.

  Promise shaded her eyes. "That's ... not one of ours. State?"

  "Damned if I know . . ." But I don't think so .. .

  That doubt turned into horrified certainty. A smaller Ephesian craft glided across the sky as if to greet its new sister. A line of light leapt from the belly of the larger craft, connecting the two craft like a glowing cable. The Ephesian ship exploded.