Nineveh's Child

by Gerhard Gehrke

  “Sure, you could subdue me, but then what? Gregory almost cost you the use of your medicine machines. My brother is sick, and he’ll be asleep for a while.”

  The female hunter said something into her mic. Four more hunters charged into the lab from the two other entrances. Dinah now had a half-dozen weapons aimed at her face.

  “You’ll want to listen to me for a moment,” Dinah said. “All of you.”

  “Grab her,” the woman said.

  “You don’t want to do that,” she said.

  None of them got any closer, but none lowered their weapons. They kept clicking on their mics, no doubt murmuring “No, you do it” to one another. Finally, one of them moved toward her.

  Dinah took a deep breath and in a loud voice said, “If you want your next medicine dose at the appointed six a.m. time, you will not touch me.”

  The hunter stopped short of her and looked at the female hunter.

  Dinah continued. “The medicine printers are under my control. All of them. The passwords have been changed. My brother is currently in a coma, and I’m the only one who can unlock the printers and get you your morning dose.”

  “You’re lying,” the woman said.

  The hunters muttered and clicked among themselves. The nearest snapped out of his indecision and took her arm. Dinah didn’t pull away, but focused on speaking as loudly and calmly as possible.

  “No, I’m not lying. Look for yourself, at this medicine printer and any of the others. They’re all on the network, and all of them are locked. And if you think you can force me to unlock them, you’re wrong. You might feel fine today without your medicine, but what about tomorrow? The day after? How about by the end of the week? When’s the last time you went for any amount of time without it? I’ll bet it wasn’t fun. It was probably painful. Did you feel your bones shifting and your muscles knotting? You maybe even found it difficult to think. Ruben may be out indefinitely. Now you have to deal with me.”

  Dinah was making too many guesses for her own comfort. Her only saving grace was that Rosalyn was the only one conscious who absolutely knew when Dinah was full of goat manure. The hunter that held her looked to the female hunter for guidance.

  “Show us,” she said.

  “Just you. If you’ll allow me.”

  She nodded curtly and followed Dinah into the office. Dinah got on the computer and leaned far enough over the keyboard to block the hunter from seeing her typing. A moment later the printer came to life, and Dinah went out into the lab to feed the machine so it could finish its task. Once it was done, she handed a vial of finished drug to the hunter. The woman considered it, then Dinah, and passed it along to one of her subordinates.

  The woman clicked her mic once. Without hesitation, the hunter put the drug into a personal injection device with several short pins at its tip. He unbuttoned his shirt and jabbed it into one of his pectorals. The injection left no visible mark.

  They all watched him carefully. After a minute, he nodded.

  “Make more,” the woman said.

  “That’s not how this arrangement is going to work.”

  The woman nodded toward her brother. “Wake him up.”

  “I can’t. He was having a seizure. I had to sedate him, since none of the doctors were around. He will be out for days, maybe more.” She knew when Gregory woke up, he could contradict her story. Security footage would show them taking Ruben from the hospital. But soon it wouldn’t matter.

  Dinah guessed she was reaching the limits of the hunter’s problem-solving skills. They hadn’t been bred for negotiation. She knew what would come next, so she spoke first.

  “I know you’re considering hurting me, or hurting Rosalyn or Karl, to get me to comply. That might work, but think again. One small change, and I give you cancer. Or the plague. Or a special brew of smallpox that wipes out everyone here. Or I just delete the entire program and let the chips fall where they may. You can’t risk that. I’m offering you what you need to survive. And I’ll make you a promise that I will never hold out on you if you don’t try to hurt me or my friends.”

  More clicks from the hunters.

  The female hunter went over to Ruben and checked his pulse. She lifted one of his eyelids. See? Your old boss is still alive. But her wheels were still turning. Dinah wondered how long Gregory would have remained in control with this woman around. The hunter then began to rummage through some of the medical supplies.

  “Don’t,” Dinah said. “You won’t be able to do anything to help him. Only I can. He gave me this authority. I now control this machine as well as the ones in your dorm and the ones you use in your trucks. Only I can give you your medicine. He can’t. Gregory can’t. But I will take care of you. And I will take care of him.” She tilted her chin at Ruben

  Another long silence as the hunter processed this. Her fellows continued clicking. She silenced them with a gesture.

  “We do what she says,” the woman hunter said aloud. The implied “for now” was mapped out in her every move and gesture. She watched Dinah like a predator waiting for a moment of weakness from her prey.

  “What’s your login ID?” Dinah asked.

  “Clarice five-two-oh-six.”

  “That’s a nice name, Clarice.”

  Dinah went back to the office and got back on the terminal. With a few commands, she gave Clarice limited admin access to all the medicine printers but the one in the White Room. The access would have to be renewed daily.

  She let Clarice know. “Take care of your hunters,” Dinah said. “Now please have them all go upstairs with you and out of the lab. I have patients to care for. You and I can speak later about what happens next.”

  When the hunters all filed out, Dinah nearly collapsed.

  ***

  Later that morning, a nurse came running into the White Room, saying that the hunters were attacking Dr. M.

  Clarice had stationed two guards at the elevator just outside the research wing, and the two hunters had him kneeling with his face against a wall. Apparently he had been shouting about “putting a stop to this foolishness,” so they had grabbed him. She got the hunters to let him go easily enough, and she would have laughed if she weren’t so tired. By the time she walked with him down to the White Room, he was frazzled and completely confused.

  She laid it out in plain language what she had done and watched him for a reaction. Karl stood behind her, and for some reason that felt good.

  “No, no, no, no, no.”

  He went to Ruben and began an examination. He then tried to get the medicine printer to work.

  “Unlock the printer,” he said. “We can reverse whatever you gave him. You don’t have any idea what you’re doing.”

  “From the looks of it, neither do you,” Dinah said. “You never did. What you’ve done over the past few years is evil. I don’t know how much of it was your doing or his, but right now it doesn’t matter. I need you to take care of them.”

  He looked at the two patients on the medical tables, his lips quivering. Rosalyn was now asleep, the painkillers doing their job. Ruben was still completely out. But Dinah was pointing toward the room with green lights.

  “Not just Ruben and Rosalyn. We’re going to make the people in there humans again.”

  Dr. M was caught between a nod and a head shake. He finally spit out words. “I…I…don’t know if it’s possible. They’ve been conditioned for so long.”

  “You’re going to try. And you’re going to succeed. That’s your new job here. You’re going to get the rest of the people of Nineveh working on this as a condition of their continued living here. Anyone that doesn’t cooperate will be forced to leave.”

  He stared at her, his mouth hanging open.

  “Will you help me?” she asked.

  He gave the twitchiest nod she’d ever seen.

  “Good. It’s almost seven o’clock. We’re going to inform the redoubt about what’s going on at eight. You’re going to do a lot of the talking, so get it tog
ether. The redoubt will continue to operate, and we need staff down here to clean this place up. Then you’re going to get Redmon unhooked from the machine. And after that you’re going to educate me on what exactly was done to us.”

  37. Flux

  Dinah had brought the nurses and doctors all down into the White Room to begin taking the nodes off the machines. Dr. M had done as he had been told and informed the redoubt about what needed to take place. They had all listened in stunned disbelief to their new primary assignment. One aged junior administrator had tried to order the two hunters with Dinah to arrest her, but neither had moved.

  Dr. Hel, now freed from her bonds, had unmasked hate in her eyes, but she went along with the rest of the medical staff.

  It’s going too smoothly, Dinah thought, just before Dr. Hel struck her with a metal tray and knocked her to the floor. The blow caught her off-guard, and she lay there stunned, uncertain of what had even happened.

  “I won’t let you destroy our work.” She had the tray up and was about to swing it again, but the closest hunter didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Dr. Hel by the neck and slammed her up against a wall. Soon she was gasping for air. Neither Dr. M nor any of the other onlookers said or did anything.

  “Stop!” Dinah shouted. “Don’t hurt her.”

  Dr. Hel was turning a deep shade of red as she feebly pawed at the hunter’s arm.

  “Let go,” Dinah said, and the hunter did.

  Dr. Hel collapsed against a table and coughed. Dinah got up and touched her own face where the tray had hit her. It felt hot and tender, but she’d suffered worse blows. She considered the doctor. She had become an old woman since Dinah had left, but there still was an odd vitality to her that contrasted with so much of the rest of the redoubt and its residents, including Dr. M.

  “We all have many things to digest,” Dinah said. “But it’s time for you to practice medicine and actually care for everyone here. They’re no longer part of a computer network. If it’s possible, they will be rehabilitated so they can walk and care for themselves.”

  “That won’t be possible,” Dr. M said, repeating again what he had told Dinah a half-dozen times that morning. “They’ve all been conditioned for so long for this assignment. Most won’t survive without their machines and their medicine.”

  “Well then, we’ll do the best we can. If we can restore some of them, even one, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  Dinah tasted blood in her mouth. She grabbed a paper towel and dabbed her lip. When the staff began to disperse, Dinah tried to put a hand on Dr. Hel’s shoulder, but the doctor recoiled. Her eyes looked wild, darting between the other medical personnel and the hunter watching her.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not doing this. You can’t stop our research when we’ve come so far, accomplished so much. Where is he?”

  “My brother? I told you, he’s incapacitated. And you don’t get to see him.”

  The Beast decided this was a good time to rub up on the back of Dinah’s legs. He considered the doctor and the others all gathered around and didn’t seem to find any of them the least bit interesting. Dinah shooed him off.

  “But who will care for Ruben?” Dr. Hel asked in a small voice.

  “I will. That’s why he brought me back. He’ll be looked after. I’ll feed him. I’ll make sure he takes his medicine.”

  After Dr. M and the rest of the bleary-eyed staff filed into the node room to get a sense of their assignment, Dinah took Dr. Hel to her old cell. Something about her made Dinah nervous. She never remembered Dr. Hel having any particular attachment to her brother—perhaps she’d even been one of the people Ruben had had to overthrow—but something had changed. Perhaps Dr. Hel had known then that it was time to switch sides, but she clearly wouldn’t be doing that again.

  “You can’t make me work for you,” she was screaming as the hunter closed the cell door. “He needs me. And if you don’t let me help him, he’ll die.”

  Dr. M was waiting patiently for Dinah back in the lab.

  He can wait some more.

  She locked herself in the office to do some reading. Once logged in, she looked up history. More specifically, her brother’s history. She also pulled up Dr. Hel’s file. It took about thirty minutes before she reached an “aha” moment. She would have seen it sooner, but the adrenaline of the day had vanished and now it felt as if weights had been tied to her limbs. She needed a nap, but she read on.

  All her brother’s medical checkups, bio-data, and drugs and their doses had been dutifully logged. He received the standard hunter cocktail plus numerous tweaks, which included blockers for cystic fibrosis and melanoma. This latest prescription dated back three years. Dr. M had been the attending physician prior to the latest drug regimen. But then Dr. Hel had taken over.

  Her bio indicated she wasn’t just a math teacher but also a cancer doctor. And around the same time, Dr. Hel had started taking a treatment of her own. Like the hunter drug, what she took was authorized by Ruben. She couldn’t produce her own drug without his permission. Too much medical shorthand stared back at her, things she would need to look up and research to understand. The cables with the mental hookup to the network beckoned. Even with the nodes offline, the answers would be faster and more forthcoming, and she could process what she was reading in seconds. So much of this was still her brother’s game, and she still only understood a handful of the pieces.

  She could get it all back online within the afternoon. The network would be as obedient as the hunters. She logged off. Punching the keyboard did little good, but it made her feel better. She ignored the fresh pain in her hand.

  Dr. M knocked softly at the door.

  “Just a moment.”

  She closed her eyes and counted. When she opened them, she saw a book her brother had shoved onto a high shelf. It was the same one from Dr. M’s office so many years ago. The History of Go: The Fourth Cultivated Art. She flipped through its pages and found the name Akaboshi. She laughed.

  ***

  Dinah took Rosalyn to an underpopulated hallway in the adult dorms where she could have a room of her own. Karl’s stitches were good enough and hadn’t needed to be replaced. Dr. M gave Rosalyn a shot, and she slept a lot that first day and through the night. She didn’t want to stay in her room when Dinah checked on her the next morning, insisting on coming along for an exploration of the redoubt.

  A hunter fell in with them, and he was overly helpful opening doors and intimidating any residents that got too close.

  “We should just burn the place,” Rosalyn said as they toured the kitchen and Nineveh’s stockrooms of frozen and dehydrated foodstuffs. At first Dinah thought she just meant the kitchen, but by her expression Rosalyn was thinking bigger.

  “That’s one solution.”

  They next went to see the hunters’ quarters. The hunters had a surprisingly un-Spartan living space separate from any of Nineveh’s lower dorm wings and had their own stairway into the greenhouse. They walked through a nexus of rooms where all the doors stood propped open, as if privacy was something foreign and unwanted. A central rec room stood in the middle of it all, stripped of electronic diversions. A medicine printer was discreetly placed on a counter near a sink.

  Rosalyn and Dinah kept a respectful silence. They only saw one pair of hunters asleep in their bunks. The night shift, no doubt, as the rest were on duty. By a nest of sofa cushions Dinah found the largest collection of children’s books she had ever seen.

  No wonder the library didn’t have many.

  They also hoarded crayons, pens, and paper. The walls were covered with hundreds of drawings of the outside, of animals, of the water and bay to the south, of sunsets and sunrises. Some had religious overtones, depicting lights shining down on happy people. The hunter who escorted them even pointed out one purple bunny drawing and proclaimed “I made that” before resuming his mute role as their guardian.

  Dinah found the drawings disturbing. Peaceful, simple, colorful, and created by hands who h
ad committed such acts of violence.

  And what were the hunters? She hadn’t discovered any early records on what had been done to them, or if they were even originally a product of Nineveh or something the redoubt had inherited from before. She still wasn’t sure if she should feel revulsion or kinship toward them. Nineveh had made them strong enough for survival and just smart enough to follow orders, but the hunters kept wanting to turn into something else.

  She had discovered more in the vaults of information, but it was too much to process. One thing that was certain was that too much genetic manipulation resulted in aberration, the body fighting against or compensating for the changes to the DNA. This happened frequently with any human subject older than an embryo, and was what several reports labeled an “epigenetic shift.” So much of the information referred back to papers and news items not in Nineveh’s records.

  “We’re due up in the greenhouse,” Dinah said. She had what she wanted: a count of how many hunters slept within the redoubt.

  Karl and the new hunter captain Clarice waited for them there. Karl had acquired an aluminum cane from the hospital. Clarice, in sharp contrast to the other hunters, was being vocal, explaining to Karl the schedule for some exterior maintenance. Dinah realized she would have to reevaluate the term “hunter,” as these people performed every task that required anyone to go outside. The myth of the self-sufficient underground civilization was truly buried.

  When Clarice saw Rosalyn and Dinah approach, she looked irritated, as Karl’s attention was now on them.

  “May we speak with Karl for a moment?” Dinah asked.

  “I’ll be back by twenty hundred,” Clarice said. She clicked her mic and a hunter with a toolbox fell in behind her as she headed toward the metal rolling gate.

  “So?” Dinah asked.

  Karl exhaled. “She’s intense.”

  “And what about the rest of this place?”