Vision

by N. D. Hansen-Hill

  “Where does she sleep?” Erik asked, looking a little distastefully at the pig.

  “Who?” Zar asked, with a lascivious look at Merrie.

  “The pig.”

  “Angelina.”

  “O-Okay.” Erik repeated slowly.

  “In her room.” Zar wove his way through to the closet in his bedroom. There were some thick pink blankets on the floor, a bowl labelled “Angel", and some stuffed animals.

  “I don't believe it,” Josh said.

  “I think it's great,” Ren remarked. Here was a pig she could tolerate. “Angel!” she called. “Is she friendly?”

  Zar nodded, with drunken enthusiasm. “Smart, too. Watch this. Angel! Can you get a drink? A drink, Angel?”

  Angel grunted, then trotted over to the fridge. She pushed it open with her snout, grabbed a drink bottle off the shelf, tipped her head and loudly slurped it down.

  “Sometimes she forgets to shut the door,” Zar said fondly. “I keep her bottle filled with juice. She just loves the stuff.”

  “You don't share, do you?” Josh asked him doubtfully.

  Dusty was sitting on Zar's lumpy sofa. He felt a lot more comfortable getting to know this side of Valterzar.

  There was a scratching at the door of the other room.

  James asked, “That your dog?”

  “Yeah. Let him out if you want.”

  He opened the door and a Corgi came running out of the bedroom, barking enthusiastically.

  “Scooter,” Valterzar introduced him.

  “Charmed, I'm sure,” said Erik, as the dog came over to sniff his leg.

  A fat grey cat came through the window, thudded onto the floor, and batted the dog on the nose while the pig sniffed its rear.

  “Just one big, happy family,” Ren remarked. She sat down next to Dusty and flashed him a smile. Dusty leaned back, comfortable, and held out his arm. Ren rested her head against his shoulder. A moment later, Dusty was snoring softly, while Slimeball the cat came over and curled up in his lap.

  “How many creatures do you have?” Josh asked him. He was still having trouble absorbing this clash with Zar's public persona.

  “Angel, Scooter, Foxy, Slimeball, Cherry, and Beelzebub. Oh, and the two axolotls. Haven't named them.”

  “'course not,” Jamie said with a smirk.

  “What I want to know is how come I never noticed any dog hair on you.” Erik still couldn't believe their stiff-necked team leader had this hidden side.

  “I'm a professional,” Zar told him.

  “Beelzebub?” Josh was asking warily, as he looked around the room.

  “The ferret,” Zar explained.

  “I'll never take you seriously again,” Jamie joked.

  “Reason I let you in. You never have to,” Zar said. He sat down in a chair, and Angelina jumped into his lap. He grunted a little under her weight. “She's not usually this possessive,” he explained.

  Merrie was grinning happily. She plopped on the side of Zar's chair, and wrapped her arms around him. Angel gave a jealous snort.

  “Sorry, Angel,” she said, kissing Zar's temple. “But he's mine.”

  Chapter Ten

  Dustin was having lunch with Erik the next day. Or, rather, Erik had decided he was having lunch with Dustin. He'd walked into the office, bypassed the receptionist, and announced, “I've ordered up some D'Angelo's. Should be here in ten minutes.”

  It wasn't the first time Erik had done this—just the first time in several years.

  “Hey, Erik!” Doug Bigelow, one of the graphics team, greeted him. “Haven't seen you in a while. How's the healing game?”

  “Good. By the way, I ordered enough cannelloni for everyone. I know how you computer guys eat.” He poked at a pile of M & M wrappers on Dusty's desk, then peered distastefully into a half-full can of Coke. “I think this was here on my last visit.”

  “Same brand, different issue.” Dusty's smile was strained. “Can't we do this later? I have a client waiting for me to finish these designs.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Erik dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “I've been thinking. If we tell Smythe how Valterzar came through for us, he'll reinstate him. The way I see it, Smythe just doesn't know how valuable the man is.”

  Dusty diminished the screen, and turned to look at him. “Why the sudden interest in coercion?”

  “You were there last night, too—”

  “As a gesture of support,” Dusty lowered his voice. “He went out of his way to save my butt.” He sighed. “Probably knew it wouldn't win him any points with Smythe.”

  “What? Saving your butt?” Erik grinned. “A la contraire. Smythe was so eager to save the team that he would have requisitioned the Concorde, if he'd thought it would have gotten me there any faster.”

  “There are better places to talk about this,” Dusty told him warningly. He leaned back in the chair and said quietly, “I don't need a bloody overseer. None of us do.” He regarded Erik curiously. “I thought you were the first one to realise that.”

  “'Overseer', no—'support network', yes. Besides, I didn't realise until this trip that Valterzar was—” He looked at Doug, but he had the headphones on, and the receptionist had turned up the radio to give them some privacy. “—one of us.”

  “Which is why Smythe probably canned him. Because we know now. So does Valterzar.”

  Erik looked confused. “I don't get it. What sense does that make? We'd be more willing to work with him now.”

  “That's the point. Valterzar was the safety, in case one of us blew a gasket.”

  Erik raised an eyebrow, grinned at him, then casually inspected his fingernails. “Uh-huh.”

  “It worked. I blew, but Valterzar stopped it. So now, we all know he can ‘stop’ things.”

  Erik frowned. “So now they don't want him around?”

  “Yep.”

  “You think they want to use us?”

  “Mexico was probably a test run—just to see how we'd react. I bet they never expected us all to go.”

  “We showed them we really are a Cluster.” Erik looked dismayed. “A cluster of numbskulls.”

  “Yeah. They'll probably interpret our joint effort as a need to stick together. Incapable of independent functioning.”

  Erik shook his head and opened his mouth, but Dusty interrupted him.

  “Even you. Look where you turned up, when we all went walkabout.” He turned back to the computer. “Maybe they're right. Maybe we do have dependency problems.”

  “And we're supposed to be so grateful to Symtech for watching over us all these years,” Erik muttered, “that we should be eager to give something back.”

  Dusty sighed. “The last person they'd want involved is someone who could counter what we're doing. Especially since we know about him, and might ask him to interfere.” He added firmly, “Zar's better out of it. At least he'll have some peace.”

  Erik snorted. “Are you kidding? He's with Merrie. Not even ‘Rest in Peace’ works with her.”

  * * * *

  Ren never knew exactly when the idea came into her head—only that once there, it wouldn't go. She kept thinking about something Dusty had said, about their “Cluster". About the way they'd all come together when there was trouble.

  It was easy to tell that in some respect, it was bothering him. No sooner had he made a bid for independence than all hell had broken loose for some of the team.

  What he wasn't saying, was that the two people involved in trouble were the team members he'd been closest to in recent years. And that he wasn't at all sure it was a coincidence.

  Neither am I. Ren couldn't help but wonder how they'd all come to be there, together, at the end. How they'd all happened to meet up in a remote town in the backside of nowhere. Dusty might be thinking in terms of overblown loyalties; possibly even some kind of conditioning to make them all react—"brainwashing", of a sort. But now Ren was thinking of something else. She worked with biochemical signals in the lab: with plants
that released ethylene after wounding, to warn other plants that an insect or fungal attack was on the way. The ethylene triggered defence mechanisms in those other plants, so they wouldn't be as vulnerable to predation. Was there some kind of biochemical mechanism at work here? Biochemical, or bioelectrical? Some signal between them all that told them to “cluster"?

  Her mind kept coming back to Myxomycetes. Slime moulds. They'd been a subject of study by botanists, cell biologists, and mycologists for a number of years, way back when, because of their singular behaviour, which was unlike that of any other creature. Some slime moulds could travel in a sheet, as a mass of protoplasm. This “plasmodium” could move from place to place, much like an amoeba. It could change characteristics, becoming more fungus-like, with fruiting bodies to produce spores.

  The Dictyostelids, or cellular slime moulds, lived most of their lives as individual, amoeba-like cells. For all intents and purposes, each cell was an independent agent, functioning to gather its own food, and to survive in its own way. At certain times, however, the swarm of “amoeba” would suddenly come together, in response to a chemical cue. Then, they'd not only group—they'd coalesce into a fruiting body, which acted as a single unit. It was incredible—as if a leg which had functioned as an independent mass of cells suddenly came together on a signal, which then permitted it to take someone for a stroll.

  Slime moulds were unique, and arguments had abounded about whether to place them in Fungi, for their fruiting bodies, or Protista, for their flagellate forms. Their behaviour was something that had fascinated mycologists, zoologists, and cell biologists for years.

  Ren didn't know why she kept thinking of this now, or why it was bothering her so much. She'd already been thinking in terms of triggers, and the way Erik's and Dusty's responses had changed. They'd all been through some episodes where their reactions had been overblown, or the outcome unexpected. It had occurred to her there might be an age-related variable, similar to some genetic diseases that only become truly active when triggered by age, or protein production, or removal of masking support systems. Now, her mind kept going back to the gene therapy they'd supposedly had as infants. What kinds of genes had been introduced?

  She'd suggested to Josh that maybe they were triggers for each other, somehow responsible for catalysing a response that might not otherwise have happened. Well, that didn't seem to be the case with Dusty—he claimed he'd been able to turn up, in that flash at the airport, with no external influence at all. Maybe, if they were triggers for each other, it was in the way of slime moulds—some stimulus that drew them together. If that was true, she might be able to live with it, but only if it was internal, and not external: i.e., a friend needed her—she somehow sensed it—she reacted. If it was Symtech, using an ethylene-like response to stimulate a reaction, she wanted no part of it, and would do whatever it took to fight them.

  It was one thing reacting to a biochemical stimulus, and quite another being trained to respond in a predictable way.

  Less than human.

  Ren shuddered. No matter how artfully they'd guised themselves in education, responsibilities, and relationships, there would always be ways they didn't “fit in". Ways in which they related so much better to each other, than anyone else.

  Maybe because they had something more than the standard gene pool.

  The thought was terrifying—so terrifying that she didn't want to share it with anyone, even Dusty. She didn't want any of the others to feel the way she did now.

  Didn't want them to start wondering, the way she was, exactly what they were.

  * * * *

  Marc Jekkes had never seen Charles Smythe look so pleased with the results of an experiment.

  As they sat in his office, Marcus looked out at their park-like surroundings and thought, All a facade. Just beyond the fences, the hustle-bustle of humanity raced by. The complex was far enough away from the city centre to avoid heavy foot traffic, but the freeway ran along one side, and the main thoroughfare through town did business down the other.

  This was the site, many years ago, where some of the Clusters had been schooled. Many of the buildings had been replaced after Symbio was bought out, and the old dormitories were now offices. The only thing that had remained somewhat the same was the “medical wing". Now, it was a lab.

  It hadn't been so very different then.

  “Why'd you let Valterzar go?” Marcus asked. He hadn't intended to be so blunt, but it had been bothering him since he'd drafted the letter. It made no sense to liberate the only member of a Cluster who could hold the others in any kind of control.

  Smythe's response was different from what he'd expected. Apparently, the Cluster Project had gone from being a piece of ancient history to something much more relevant.

  For the last ten years, Charles Smythe had been stuck with it. It was a dinosaur, as far as today's gene technology was concerned: old methods, uncertain results. Smythe had been unlucky enough to inherit it when he'd taken this desk. At the time, the Cluster Project had been simply a series of files in a folder, with an unusually early commencement date, and an uncomfortably large chunk of his budget allotment. It was, perhaps, good that in those early days, Charles had been as uncertain of his job status as he was of the wisdom in sustaining an experiment that no longer seemed to have any relevance. He'd left everything in place; letting attrition and inflation balance the budget as the years went by.

  There'd been moments of relevance, of course—when he'd had to approve “hiring” Valterzar, or tolerate visits from Cluster members. They tended to walk right in, as though these was still school grounds and they were alumni paying a visit. Erik Dainler had been the most arrogant, and Lawrence Valterzar the most frequent. Charles suspected that neither man had any idea how inconsequential the Cluster Project had become.

  Symbio Corporation had assumed a moral responsibility for the experiment, even though their decision had no basis in morals. It was a clear case of human experimentation, and could easily have been a matter of public record by now. The only reason it wasn't, owed largely to an agreement made many years before, in which Symbio had made financial commitments to train, oversee, and establish the “victims” in a near-normal lifestyle. Considering the unknown outcomes of the research, this was a far more acceptable resolution to a questionable procedure than a one-time payout, which would have brought both Symbio and its government affiliations into the limelight.

  The victims’ families had been fairly circumspect. No headlines, no accusations. They, too, had been compensated, but not to the extent that guilt would play a part in their decisions. Part of that compensation had been the removal of offspring whose symptoms were not only bizarre, but frightening. Special schooling, interspersed with frequent familial visits, had largely eliminated any of their concerns. Besides, in the days before molecules were regularly segmented, or protein patterns run on gels, dotted onto ELISA plates, and tagged in RAPD analyses, the individual families would have had trouble denying that the problem wasn't theirs to start with—some misconstruction of genetic chance. Many of them had been happy enough to have help with their problem—to find someone who would take their concerns seriously. Hard to explain how your child can read people's minds, see into locked rooms, or raise the dead. A dilemma for any parent. Symbio made no admissions of culpability, but offered what may have seemed like the only solution.

  Insanity was institutionalised. Aberrant ESP needed to be rechannelled.

  There were a few exceptions, whose problems went largely unnoticed, because the outcomes were internalised. Lawrence Valterzar was one of these, and he'd grown up in a normal family, but had gone on to specialise in the abnormal. It suggested to Symtech that he wasn't totally unaware of his “gift"—just of its possibilities.

  “Valterzar? Besides the obvious reluctance to follow orders, he's discovered what he can do. They all know it now, which means they'd turn to him if they felt things were getting out of hand.”

  Jekkes didn't inter
rupt. He just stood there silently.

  “Don't give me that look, Marcus. I've already told you we're here to push limits. With Valterzar involved, we wouldn't be pushing anything.”

  “Maybe you're wrong. Maybe having him there would make them feel they had a cushion—for some experimentation.”

  “Possibly. After all these years, things are finally beginning to get interesting. Only now, the Board's talking about pulling the plug.”

  Marcus frowned. “Did you tell them about Mexico? About how successful one of the Clusters was in finding that plane?”

  Charles nodded. “Oh, the Board's happy enough to have some use for them, even if it's only as St. Bernards in search and rescue. But the agency's complained—wants to know why, in the guise of ‘helping’ them, we went counter to their efforts.”

  “Why their pilot ended up dead? What did they expect our Cluster to do? Stand there and take it?”

  “It's more like why—” Charles started chuckling, “—some of their equipment attacked them.”

  “Maybe they'll take the Project off our hands.”

  “Except if they pick up a ‘dead’ Project, we're not going to get any compensation for it.” Charles sounded frustrated. “We've invested money in this for years—more than matched what they put in. If we write it off, they'll just take it over. Nothing for lost revenue.”

  “Sounds like the Board needs to rethink things.”

  “They've lost interest. Most of them feel we've done our bit to compensate the families. We've ‘served our sentence'. Drew Garris was our last physical link to the project, and he passed away last year.”

  “The company doesn't even have the same name,” Marcus added. “There's no way the public's going to hold us responsible for what our predecessors did.”

  “Right.” Smythe's eyes glinted with suppressed excitement. “And the agency is anxious to take over, because they're beginning to see the possibilities. They'd rather be in control than adhere to any agreements for a payout.”

  “Doesn't the Board know about the clause in the maintenance agreement?”

  “Compensation for ‘extracurricular activity'?”