Nineveh's Child

by Gerhard Gehrke

  The medicine printer whirred into full swing, a steady hum followed by a clatter. It took some digging, but she found the syringes that would fit the vials. The machine pinged. The first vial was full. She took it out and filled the syringe, squeezing a few drops out of the tip.

  She pulled on plastic gloves as the printer continued to hum and click.

  “Hold still.”

  Ruben didn’t struggle as she rolled up his sleeve, revealing an already connected intravenous line. As she touched his arm, his tremors subsided.

  “They’re coming,” Rosalyn said. She pushed a metal cabinet in front of the door. There were two other doors to the lab that would have to be blocked. There wouldn’t be enough furniture to make any kind of lasting barrier.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Just do your best,” Dinah said.

  She injected the drug into him. He was breathing quickly as she did it, but the smile remained. Was he pleased with what she was doing? Was this part of his grand design, a game where his rules had dictated her every move, including seeking him out and allowing herself to come back, only to fill him full of the DNA-altering formula that might kill him, or worse?

  The first drug was a mild sedative. Within a few seconds, his head drooped. She checked the printer. It continued to work on its next task for the job: creating two vials of the drugs that would execute the designer choices dictated by the paper doll program. There was nothing she could do to make it go faster.

  The potential of the printer wasn’t lost on her, the good something like this could do for people dying of simple infections and tuberculosis and other maladies. If she could get into his computer, she could make the printer do anything she could think of with a few keystrokes. A lethal dose of epinephrine? Check. Some lysergic acid diethylamide to stir his addled brain? Easy. The program for the printer had a cookbook of recipes for thousands of drugs.

  “Dinah,” Karl called from the office. “They’re all of a sudden communicating with one another. I see a flurry of clicks. But I don’t know what it means.”

  “It means they’re here.”

  The door to the hallway rattled. Someone was using a key and pushing. Rosalyn pushed back but was rapidly losing the fight. A hunter got his hand in the door. Dinah would only have a minute before they got in, maybe less.

  She heard noise from the Wally’s room. Furniture was being pushed out of the way.

  The printer pinged. It began to print the second vial. She got it ready and administered it to her brother. She would need to give him the last one too for the proper dose.

  “Karl, get out here!” she called.

  He limped out of the office and looked where she was pointing. He moved along a counter to the door to the Wally room, leaning heavily. She thought he would fall, but he made it to the door just in time to muscle it closed as someone on the opposite side tried to enter.

  “Dinah, this is foolish,” she heard Dr. M call. She couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. It didn’t originate from either door where hunters were trying to enter. Then she looked up and saw a speaker mounted on one wall, a fixture she thought long dead. “Just let us in and end this nonsense.”

  The last vial was almost full. She lifted her brother’s head. His doped eyes looked back at her.

  “Tell me how to get into the program, and I promise I will find you.”

  The toothy grin was that of a twelve-year-old boy. She didn’t think he would say anything, that maybe he was past understanding words because of the sedative. The printer dinged. She went to prepare the last syringe.

  A hunter broke in from the hallway. Rosalyn was knocked backward onto the floor. The hunter held a bleeding hand tucked against his chest like a bird with a broken wing.

  There hadn’t been enough time. When the hunter shouted at Dinah to stop, she almost did.

  Then her brother whispered, “Akaboshi.”

  “What?”

  “Akaboshi. Don’t make me spell it. Look it up. You’ll find it funny.”

  “Akaboshi,” she repeated. The word meant nothing to her. She squeezed droplets out of the upright syringe.

  Gregory entered. He pointed a pistol at Karl, but then looked in Dinah’s direction. Once he saw her over her brother with a syringe in her hands, his weird blue eyes said it all. She knew he would murder her if she even flinched.

  She jabbed the needle home.

  36. Temporary Remedies

  “Wake him up,” Gregory said. “Now.”

  He and six other hunters crowded the lab. Karl had been thrown to the ground, a hunter with a rifle standing over him. Rosalyn had been herded next to him, a bright red splotch on the side of her face from a recent blow.

  Gregory paced about, his attention divided between Ruben and Dinah. His pink skin appeared bluish in the light of the lab. He had shed his coat. Dinah could see a pair of knives and more of the poison injectors on his black vest. He leaned close to her.

  “Wake him!”

  “You need a bath,” she said.

  When he moved, it was lightning fast. He twisted her around and wrenched her right arm behind her. She thought it would snap. When she screamed, he slapped her on the side of her head.

  “You’re no longer a child. Stop acting like one.”

  He marched her over to the medicine printer.

  “Now we’re going to undo whatever you did to him,” he said. “Wake him up.”

  “It doesn’t work like that. You’ll need one of the doctors. Where’s Doctor M?”

  “No more games.”

  Gregory shoved her toward her brother, then grabbed Rosalyn. One of his poison injectors was in his hands and he touched the tip of it to her neck.

  “Don’t!” Dinah screamed.

  “Whatever you did to him you can undo,” he said. “Your time here is finished. He’s indulged you too long. Now wake him up.”

  She noticed a twitch cross Gregory’s face like a ripple in water. His breathing came in short gasps. At first she thought it was because he was enjoying their confrontation. No doubt he was. But something else was going on with him. Perspiration clung to his face. Rosalyn squirmed, but Gregory had little problem keeping her secured. The tip of the injector tapped against her neck.

  “Just put the poison down,” Dinah said. “Give me a minute. Please.”

  Gregory made no sign of letting Rosalyn go.

  Dinah turned to her brother and made a show of checking his vitals and the line going into his arm. The drugs had gone in clean, and he was completely out. Then she went to the medical printer.

  This machine had its own menus within the interface. She found a task history. It showed the prior twenty print jobs. Three were hers, the drugs she had made for Ruben, but the other seventeen were all identical. While she browsed, Gregory made odd clicking sounds with his mouth. It sounded like he desperately needed a drink of water.

  “Your usefulness might be played out.”

  “Wait.”

  The screen didn’t give her any more information on what the recurring drug was. The long ingredient list didn’t tell her anything. It could have been a drug for the nodes in the next room, for the hunters, or even something Dr. M shot into his own veins when no one was looking. She did see a function that would allow her to repeat a prior recipe in its memory. But did Gregory know the printer could do that?

  She turned to face Gregory. “I need the computer in his office.”

  Gregory’s eyes moved between her and the medicine printer. He wasn’t interested in her brother so much. He needed something. “People’s eyes give them away,” Karl had told her once when he took her trading. Gregory wanted something Dr. M and Dr. Hel couldn’t give him. The other hunters watched her as well, none getting close.

  “He made it work without the computer,” Gregory said. “The other medicine printers too.”

  “Well, I’m not him. I need to get on that computer in there to make this work.”

  Gregory shook his head. “No
. Make it work without it.”

  His demand revealed what he truly needed. The machine was important, her brother but a means to an end.

  “Look, Gregory, you probably know this, but the computer talks to this machine here. That’s how I can make a medicine to wake him. Because nothing else will. Whatever else you want the machine to do will have to wait. So please put the poison down.”

  Gregory shoved Rosalyn to another hunter and put the poison injector away. Dinah went into the command room with Gregory on her heels. Seeing her brother’s powered-down computer filled her with apprehension. She was about to slip into her brother’s role as provider for the hunters, assuming the password worked.

  She tried to ignore the hovering hunter above her shoulder as she sat down and turned the computer on. At the password prompt, she entered Akaboshi. She spelled it right the first time. Yay, me. She was now able to see the computer interface from the user point of view, but this time it was her behind the keyboard. Clicking commands manually with a mouse felt slow. She eyed the neural links next to the terminal.

  Gregory pointed at the monitor, and she focused.

  The history page she found revealed the hunters’ daily intake of their own special cocktail. She reviewed the particulars, but the sparse notes she found told her little of the drug’s true purpose. That would be her brother’s domain. He wouldn’t have bothered setting anything down for another user because only he needed to know and understand. Everything was locked up inside his wonderful and sick head. With time, she thought she could familiarize herself with the program from this end and reverse engineer the cocktail.

  Gregory placed a hand on her shoulder. “Why aren’t you doing anything?”

  “This could take a while. I’m going as fast as I can. This is my brother’s machine. I’ve never used it before.”

  “You spent time with him here, and you were able to make a drug without even being on this computer.”

  “That’s because it was something that had been prepared ahead of time.”

  “You’re supposed to be waking your brother, not reading about this.” He grabbed the back of her head and pushed her face against the monitor. “What he gives us isn’t something you need to understand. If your intent is to debase our medicine, then your time here is finished.”

  Both of her hands were up in a surrender pose. “Gregory, let me go. I’m just looking at the last thing programmed. I don’t want to mess anything up that’s in the queue. To wake him, I need to pull up a different recipe.”

  He released her. She kept reading. She tentatively took the mouse again and scrolled down.

  From the volume and frequency, she saw that the hunters each received a daily shot. The network delegated printing duties out to several printers through the redoubt. It was reasonable to assume that the hunters had a printer in their quarters in addition to the ones they had in their trucks so they could get their medicine while on the road. She saw another recipe that would allow the printer to make a time-release pill that could last the recipient a week. Was that something the hunters even knew about? This was their lifeline. What would happen if they didn’t get their daily medicine? Death? Degradation? Their bodies conforming to some new normal state, an equilibrium between their current altered form and sickness?

  “Enough stalling. Wake him up now.”

  Gregory’s voice mic clicked. He clicked back. “Bring her.”

  The hunter with Rosalyn came to the doorway.

  “Your sister says you won’t do it,” Gregory said to Dinah. “But she says she will. It seems we only need one of you.”

  “She’s lying,” Dinah said. “It’s not that simple. We can’t just wake him up, it’s too dangerous. He has more than just a sedative in his system. Get Doctor M in here, and I can explain it to him.”

  “Yes, we can wake him,” Rosalyn said. “Let me. I know the program better than she does.”

  Gregory gave a nod, and the hunter released her.

  “Do it,” Gregory said. He now had a black metal knife in his hands.

  Rosalyn elbowed Dinah aside.

  “Rosalyn, don’t.”

  “Back off.” Rosalyn appeared to know the program as well as Dinah did, and in moments she had opened an application with hundreds of prebuilt drug options. She pulled up the virtual printer interface and began making selections.

  Gregory took Dinah by the elbow. They followed Rosalyn into the lab and watched her set up the printer. While they waited, Gregory spun the blade about in his hand. Finally, the machine began to whir. After a minute, a beep signaled it was finished.

  “It’s that easy,” Rosalyn announced. She held up a vial. As she prepped a syringe, she moved next to Ruben, who was still slumped in the wheelchair.

  “You can’t give that to him,” Dinah said. “You can’t let her. If he dies, it’s on your head, Gregory. Ask yourself if you’re willing to risk never getting your medicine again.”

  Gregory let Dinah go and took the syringe. He considered the needle and then Rosalyn. She was wearing the self-satisfied smile that she was never able to hide.

  “I’ll give it to him,” Rosalyn said. She put her hand out.

  “You think I’m stupid.”

  Dinah ducked away from Gregory and rounded her brother’s chair. Rosalyn backed up as Gregory set down the syringe and adjusted his grip on his knife. He switched focus between Dinah and Rosalyn. He would need one of them alive, and Dinah saw him lock eyes on her.

  When he lunged forward, she pushed Ruben over toward him. Gregory stopped to catch him. She dove over them and went for the hypo needle. Gregory was fast. He laid her brother down and swung an arm out in one motion, catching the back of her jumpsuit. He yanked her backward. She stumbled and went crashing to the floor, losing her grip on the syringe.

  His giggle returned. He hovered over her, his knife twisting in the air. His blue eyes bore down into hers. His breath came in short spurts.

  “Bringing you here was a mistake.”

  Rosalyn appeared behind Gregory. Other hunters were shouting, moving, but before they could do anything she stabbed Gregory in the neck with the loaded syringe and shoved down on the plunger. Gregory swung around with the knife in a wide arc, slashing her across the chest. She screamed and fell. He turned back to Dinah, put a hand around her neck, and started to squeeze, then collapsed on top of her.

  “Oh, Dinah,” Rosalyn was saying. “Oh, Dinah.”

  “I’m okay,” Dinah croaked. She couldn’t see Rosalyn. With Gregory on her, she could barely move. With all her might, she pushed, getting enough of the collapsed hunter off so she could wriggle free.

  Rosalyn lay on her back, her hand held tight over her chest. Blood flowed from between her fingers as she vainly tried to close the wound. She looked scared.

  “Let me see.”

  Dinah examined the cut. She grabbed a towel from an equipment tray and pressed it in. One of the hunters tried to intercede, but when she brushed him off he let her go. The rest of them stood around stupidly.

  “Get a first aid kit,” Dinah screamed. One of them took one off a wall and brought it to her. “And now will one of you please find Doctor M?” When none of them moved, she shouted, “Go!”

  ***

  “You’ll live,” Dinah said. “Leave it alone.”

  Rosalyn was probing the edges of her bandage, wincing with every touch. Two hunters had gone to find Dr. M, but he still wasn’t there, so Karl had done the sutures, saying that the cut, while deep, wasn’t life-threatening. The White Room proved to be one of the better places on Earth to suffer a deep cut, as its drawers and cabinets were replete with basic medical supplies. Dinah even found a topical disinfectant and numbing agent, although it didn’t do much but make her complain about a burning sensation.

  Rosalyn was staring murder in Gregory’s direction. They had bound his hands with an electric cord. Dinah had put the other four hunters to work getting Rosalyn, Gregory, and her brother up onto exam tables. She’d then di
smissed them, as they still scared her. Their odd compliance with her demands even made her more uncomfortable.

  The hunters stood just outside in the hallway, appearing unsure of what to do.

  “You’ll need to kill him,” Rosalyn said in a low voice.

  “You made yourself clear on that already,” Dinah said. “I’ll take it under advisement. For now, we restrain him and find a place to lock him up.”

  Karl had regained some of his strength. Maybe it was all of the excitement. He got into Gregory’s belt and found plastic restraints, then secured him to his table.

  “We could lock him up in my old cell,” Dinah said.

  “Worry about him later,” Karl said. “He’s not going anywhere. But the other hunters will be coming. And when they do, they’ll have a plan of action, weapons, and tools. We won’t be able to lock them out for long. They can make decisions without Gregory. So, what’re you thinking?”

  “We wait for them and let them in.”

  He nodded slowly. She left Karl with the three patients and got back on the computer. Fifteen frustrating minutes later, she found what she was looking for, logged out, and returned to the lab just in time for visitors.

  The hunters in the hallway perked up. Multiple footsteps were coming down the hallway. Dinah went to stand by Ruben and waited. She gave Karl the universal hand signal to sit down.

  Everything’s under control.

  Two new hunters came in, a man with a raised black rifle and a woman holding a crossbow. It was cocked with a bolt in place. They immediately pointed their weapons in Dinah’s direction. The woman hissed, “Get down on the floor.”

  “Or what?”

  They both closed on her, eyes narrowing, jaws set. Dinah didn’t move.

  “Or what?” she asked again. “Are you going to shoot me? What are your instructions?”

  The female hunter glanced at her companion. He had nothing to offer.