Nineveh's Child

by Gerhard Gehrke

  Ruben turned as she approached. “I think you broke her.”

  Addis lay there, with wires attached to oozing nodules on her shaved head. Her eyes were wide open. Her mouth moved slowly, like someone who had forgotten how to speak. She made short gasping sounds. Crust lined her eyes and white dried foam lined the corners of her mouth.

  Dr. Hel finally saw Dinah and shot the trailing nurse a withering look. Dr. Hel moved toward her, but Dinah took her brother’s clammy hand and she backed off. The blood in Dinah’s nose was all dried up, and now her tongue felt numb and a tingling sensation washed over her. Perhaps Dr. Hel had given her something. Looking down at Addis’s shattered expression sent a surge of anger through her, but not toward her brother or at Nineveh.

  I did this.

  She was the one who had pushed and pushed, as if it were a game, or a job, like the nodes were part of some happy bucket brigade or barn raising. She had done this to Addis, and the shame of it overwhelmed her.

  “The network has limits,” Ruben said.

  Dinah made her face into a mask. Show nothing. She stood next to her brother, all the while biting down on her tongue and digging her fingernails into the palm of her other hand.

  ***

  Dinah was put back to work after only a morning off. They must have given her something, as she had not so much slept as blacked out after returning to her cell for a couple of hours. Dr. M wouldn’t answer any questions about Addis as he hooked her up for the afternoon session.

  The chamber with the octahedron was either gone, hidden, or closed to her, and she was back in her own space managing simple number streams. She did as much of the work on her own as possible and passed little along to the nodes. But Addis was gone. The game with the paper doll had cost Addis…what? Was she dead? Had she lost her mind? Suffered an aneurysm? Dinah didn’t understand her own madness in operating the paper doll program, and this frightened her.

  “Rosalyn? Are you there?”

  “I’m working, aren’t I?” Rosalyn said.

  She’s mad at me. Rosalyn had been shut out again in Dinah’s headlong rush into figuring out the program.

  But after a minute, Rosalyn asked, “So what happened? Is the program broken? Why are we doing this simple stuff again?”

  “It’s because my brother tricked me. He set me up to fail by giving me access to everything all at once. But it’s my fault. I pushed us too far and lost a node. It’s another girl, someone I didn’t know well, but she was a friend. I think I really hurt her. Maybe I thought if my brother was connected, it would be him that would feel the pain.”

  “I’m surprised at you.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t think you’d try to hurt someone just because you could.”

  “I’m feeling guilty enough as it is.”

  “Well, snap out of it. You didn’t make this machine or put any of your old schoolmates in comas so they could be part of a computer. That’s your brother’s fault, not yours. So if you have access to the controls, use it to figure something out. Frying your brother’s brain might be a start.”

  “I don’t want to kill my brother.”

  “So, what then? Just want to poach his brain a little? Hurt him? Maybe you’re finally starting to evolve into something interesting.”

  Dinah muted her. She stewed for a while. The numbers kept on coming, but she let them back up, overflow, and dump into a side channel she created. Easy, really. She should have made it sooner. The numbers vanished into mist, like a high waterfall descending into a bottomless abyss.

  Being inside the network was the first time she’d ever really felt control, had power. And what of the cost? She didn’t owe Addis anything, and she owed even less to the others. So what if Dinah was a piece on her brother’s board? Better a queen than a pawn.

  But had Uma been just a game token, a piece to be traded or captured to bring Dinah out of the back ranks? No, Uma hadn’t been traded or captured. It had been murder, both senseless and cruel. These were Ruben’s rules, if she chose to play.

  She reopened the line with Rosalyn. “We’re stopping.”

  “You’ve tried that one before.”

  “This time it will work. Let me tell you how.”

  Rosalyn listened. She must have done as Dinah suggested, as soon her feed switched off. Dinah could tell that Rosalyn was now dumping all the data she received. She imagined they were a union of two taking a strike action. Soon enough, she was unhooked from the network and taken to her brother.

  ***

  “Addis is fine,” Ruben said. They were in his office alone, but a guard lurked just outside the door.

  “Let me see her.”

  “Not now. But later, sure. So, you gain command access, and your brilliant move is to shut everything down.”

  “It wouldn’t be necessary if you hadn’t tricked me into hurting Addis.”

  One of his eyebrows raised. He leaned forward in his chair and looked up at her, a dry laugh shaking his entire body.

  “That, dear Dinah, was a test. I hand you a gun, and you can’t help but pull the trigger. What were you hoping to accomplish? The network has limits. I told you to slow down. I have no wish to see the nodes harmed. Replacing them would be difficult. And you think you can hurt me in some way I haven’t been hurt before? I made the network what it is now. I also know what it feels like to have my synapses flooded and force-fed beyond their capacity. They were doing that to me when we were both children and the scientists were pawing about, trying to understand the technology and what it could do. Prior batches failed. That’s why they needed more nodes. But I survived, and they learned with me years ago what the potential was to their research. With a capable mind as a central hub, the advances they desired would be realized. It put their project behind, but it would have failed eventually the way they were running it. I also saw that the minds capable of being hubs had to be protected while the scientists who were running the project toward failure were weeded out.

  “That’s why I need you. My current model can have three hubs. But you came here willingly. And if it was just to hurt me, you could have done that many times over and spared us the faux cooperation.”

  She set her jaw. “Maybe I just wanted to see if you could be hurt.”

  “Our lives are pain. You know it’s possible for it to get worse. It always is.”

  “And you just pass your suffering forward.”

  He smiled. “And I see when you have the reins you can’t help but explore the limits of your power.”

  “You think I’m predictable.”

  “I think you’re a mutant. But you’re our only hope of us fixing ourselves so we can prosper in the world above and not just subsist.”

  “So that’s your next move? Flattery?”

  He shrugged and leaned back. “Why not? I’m the only one who knows you. The only other one who understands what it’s like to be the smartest person in this hole. It’s you. It’s always been you. When you were gone for the past few years, I really had no one. And neither did you.”

  She thought of Uma, Rosalyn, and even Karl. They had been a family once. With plenty of cracks, to be sure, but they were close, closer than anything she’d felt when inside the redoubt. But Ruben wanted her in the network, even though her own mind might suffer the same fate as Addis’s. His sickness had to be cured. She now had the power to do it.

  She said nothing. Instead, she leaned over and ran her hand along her brother’s arm. He felt thin, without muscles, too bony. He twitched. She stroked his head. He flinched at first, but then his eyes fluttered.

  “I’m here now,” she said.

  She surveyed his office. Here he had a neural hookup to the network, as well as a small refrigerator for his medicine. She saw several other computers, all with panels open and their peripherals in some state of disassembly. He had a com unit to talk to the hunters via their subvocal microphones. The com was jacked into some sort of junction box with a screen and also a router with a p
air of antennae. Data cables connected it to the wall. A few toy cars neatly lined one shelf, all covered in a fine film of dust. Spare electronic parts had been separated into plastic trays. A tool chest with drawers was shoved against one wall, and various hand tools and a soldering iron lay about. It looked like the kind of work Karl had been assigned to, restoring or repurposing old computers. Dinah doubted anyone could manufacture them anymore.

  “You’re so busy,” she said absentmindedly. But her brother had fallen asleep as her fingers caressed his head.

  She had seen and heard the hunters speak on their coms enough times. She took Ruben’s from the nearby counter and put it on. The strap went around the back of her neck and the microphone rested under her jaw. She examined the screen. It appeared as if the network had a channel selection, a mute function, and a way to talk to a single com.

  “Wait out in the hall,” Dinah said softly into the com.

  “Repeat,” the guard just outside said. The word was little more than a mumble.

  Ruben continued to slumber.

  Dinah repeated herself, trying her best to mimic their speech style when they used the mics, robbing her words of their vowels.

  She heard the guard walk away. When Dinah peeked out the door, he stood just outside in the hallway.

  How interesting.

  She switched the com off, put it back, and watched her brother sleep.

  32. Before: Nineveh

  Kelly’s magnetic lockpick opened every door on the way to the hospital. The late hour meant few people were around. With the older kids sick, and with punch offered at every breakfast, Dinah knew there was little time before all of them were sick, herself included. What her brother could do, she didn’t know. But even in his most helpless state, he brought her comfort, and that was what she needed.

  No one ever got to visit anyone in the hospital. Now it seemed all the rooms were full.

  She distracted a nurse with a bed alarm in one of the rooms to get to the nurses’ station. From there, she found her brother’s room.

  “Are you here?”

  She was greeted by the beep of a heart monitor. A half-dozen pieces of other hospital equipment were placed around his bed. They flashed their various lights, but she had no idea what any of it was for. A bag of clear liquid held a line that went into his arm. Another bag of orange opaque goo flowed through a tube and under the sheets.

  The metal rail of the bed felt cold as she gripped it with her trembling hands. Ruben lay in repose, peaceful, appearing dead, his mouth ajar and his lips chapped. Odd smells came from the combination of medicine, body odor, and recently-used cleaning solvents.

  “You said you’d come to visit,” she said. “That was weeks ago. I was worried.”

  His chest rose and fell with effort. She took his warm, damp hand and gave it a squeeze. The rest of his skin appeared splotchy and dry. He had lost much of his hair since she last saw him, and what remained was thin and limp.

  “What are they doing to you?”

  His eyes opened. He looked irritated, as if she was making too much noise.

  “Mutant.” The word came out as a dry whisper.

  She gripped his hand tighter. When she felt her tears start flowing, he made a dismissive wave.

  “Cheer up. Your kind is the wave of the future. So long, normal people.”

  “Tell me what’s happening. Please.”

  “It’s science.” He coughed. A wave of pain crossed his face. “That and chemotherapy. But you have to poison what you want to cure. Nurture gets us nowhere. What would the first Puritans have ever accomplished if they hadn’t brought smallpox with them? But with the disease came the cure. And the fire and smoke.”

  When he stopped speaking, she thought he had fallen asleep. She waited. After a while, she said, “Tell me how it ended.”

  He shook his head as if he didn’t want to play. But as she watched, he gave the faintest smile.

  “Nothing burns completely,” he said. “And smoke can signal that a fire has burned itself out even though it can be relit. But first the Pope and his closest Arch-Cardinals saw the signs. They gave more thought to where the world was going than the others. They survived because they took to space, either to the moon or High Earth Orbit. Of course, this wasn’t for the preservation of mankind, no. As you know, no women for those ecclesiasticals. Once in space they had to do the obvious.”

  “You don’t mean…”

  “They fought the Freemasons, of course. They had taken over the satellites and occupied half of the moon, at least. In fact, right now if you take a telescope and look up, you’ll see the bodies scattered everywhere. The Cardinals dead on the Mare Imbrium in their scarlet power armor alongside partially vaporized Blue Lodgers with their plumed helmets and cloaks snapping in the lunar winds.”

  “But there’s no wind on the moon.”

  “There is now, since the comet strike. That interrupted the Moon War, and old lady Luna, in a final selfless act, stood in the way of her blue-and-green lover and took one for the team. Long-dead lava chambers bubbled up pockets of frozen water that spewed from the poles like giant space zits. Thus wind, at least for a while.”

  He had a gleam in his bloodshot eyes. Dinah was smiling, the tears gone.

  “But wait,” she said. “I thought all the ash in the atmosphere from the supervolcano would keep anyone on Earth from seeing the moon.”

  “Radio telescope could see what happened. They just have to listen.”

  “Don’t they need power? If the power was out everywhere, they wouldn’t be able to hear anything.”

  “All your mutations have started to rot your little brain. It’s not like they were on solar power. It’s all geothermal, like this place.”

  Another cough, and this one didn’t quit. She tried to give him water but he waved the cup away.

  “You’re going away,” he said.

  “That’s not funny.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not joking. Not this time. You’re going. If you stay here, you’ll become like everyone else. They’ll make you sick like me.”

  “What’s making you sick? Is it radiation? Is it the punch?”

  He put up a hand. “Someone I’ve arranged for will come for you. Listen to him. He’s taking you out of here to the outside. He’ll keep you safe.”

  “I don’t want to go outside. I don’t want to go anywhere without you.”

  “I’m not going anywhere in my condition.” Another cough tickled his throat. It grew in intensity and lingered. It took him a minute to for him catch his breath. “Besides, my plans are still coming together. It’s time for me to make my move.”

  “You’ll be out of bed in no time,” she said without enthusiasm. The tears were flowing now.

  “Shut up, mutant.”

  One of the nurses had entered without Dinah hearing her, and she grabbed her arm. “How did you get in here?”

  “She knows how to find me,” Ruben said. “She will always know, and she will make it to me again if I let her.”

  33. Bedside Story

  Ruben had Dinah come into the node room the next morning. The green lights were on again, and the vacant bed had been filled.

  “Your newfound resolve should make today’s session go well.”

  “I’m ready. I saw Rosalyn getting connected. Is Addis back?”

  “Not quite.” Ruben stepped away from the bed. Redmon lay there, her eyes closed, wires in her head.

  A guard grabbed Dinah as she tried to run to her.

  “She’s not an ideal candidate,” Ruben said. “Too old, not conditioned, parts of her brain underdeveloped for the workload. But she’ll act as a breaker switch for you that I’ll manage. You’ll have to watch how far you push everyone for her sake. You won’t be able to shield her from an overload.”

  Dinah jerked against the guard’s grip. “I told you I’d work with you. I’m cooperating.”

  “You’re temperamental. This is too important to have you bring everythin
g to a grinding halt whenever you suffer a bad mood. I know you’ll be upset for a while. It’ll be a light morning, I promise.”

  The workload wasn’t heavy, but not light by any stretch. Dinah got no read from Redmon. Her friend was now just a blank node that did its job. Dinah did her job too. Except she couldn’t get Redmon’s face out of her head: how she had looked that first morning after rescuing Dinah, tending to her while her headache crippled her, even the woman’s own dark anger toward Karl. Now her long hair had been cut and wires were crammed into her head. Ruben had taken a person and made her a thing, a tool to be used and broken.

  She wondered if Redmon would ever forgive her.

  ***

  The next morning, she and Rosalyn walked together toward the White Room. A hunter trailed behind, distracted by the Beast, who was following them. The girls always had a hunter on them now, even when Dr. M and Dr. Hel were around.

  Using simple hand signals, Dinah indicated for Rosalyn to watch the hunters, to listen to them, and to check out their mics. Rosalyn nodded.

  At supper, they could speak. Dinah told Rosalyn about her test with the guard outside Ruben’s office. Rosalyn nodded, and by her expression Dinah could see she instantly understood the possibilities.

  “But how far could we make it ordering a few guards around?” Rosalyn asked.

  “Not far. We’d get one shot. And just escaping wouldn’t be enough.”

  “What else is there? We’re slightly outnumbered.”

  “I know. I counted. But I didn’t come back here just to escape. This whole place, all these resources, what if it was actually used to help the people up top?”

  “Aren’t we past that? Everyone is dead or has run off.”

  “I’m talking long-term. Even just electricity and computers.”

  “Your brain’s been plugged in too long.”

  “Look, everyone here has been down underground too long. I’m not sure anyone alive even remembers the point of the research they started. Were they trying to cure their ailments, or prolong life? I see hints of all of that. But some of the modifications they were working on are potentially extreme. And according to some of the program documents, most would either need to be applied to an embryo or given in repeated doses.”