The Cunning Blood

by Jeff Duntemann

  |All right, guilty. Suggestions?|

  Grasp the armrest between cots beneath its forward edge and pull back hard.

  |What about Sophia? She's not getting any air.| The Governor General had ceased struggling and was unconscious.

  I'm less interested in her life than in yours. Rip out that armrest!

  Peter did so. The armrest snapped free, and Peter hurled it upward into the roaring night. He got the idea immediately: Beneath the armrest was a giant's fist of ganged throttles, eight in all.

  Those give you direct hydraulic control of the fan vanes, as four groups of two adjacent fans. The fans fall back to intermediate thrust if control fails, but the throttles can adjust fan thrust roughly. Mostly you have control through the vanes. Move them as a unit as you would a joystick; raise for more thrust, lower for less. Each fan has its own generator. Scratch that; each fan is its own generator. Even if all craft avionics are dead, if the fans are intact we have a chance.

  Peter nodded. He thrust his right hand into the cluster of throttles, got his fingers into the grip rings, and pushed opposite the direction they were banking. Compared to the feather-light controls he was used to, the hydraulic arms took considerable strength to move.

  The stealth shuddered but straightened. Peter shoved the throttles forward, and it dove. |Where are we?|

  Kill altitude first. We'll figure out where we are later.

  The small plane bucked and shuddered as they moved downward through increasingly dense air. Peter was glad it was night. |We're probably over the Lake. We could ditch this thing and get away.|

  Could we? I'm not sure. The Governor General is with us. If she's alive, we're kidnapping her; if she's dead they'll assume we murdered her. Either way, it's only a matter of hours before we have the manhunt of the century on our back. As best we know, Geyl is still going to Hell tomorrow. If she is, there's the chance that we can come back with her, and we must go. We need to find out why 1Earth is so interested in Hell.

  Peter's lips were cold. He held the back of his left hand against them. Talk about a devil's bargain, snatched away at the last minute. |So we turn ourselves in on a crippled military spy plane with the corpse of the Governor General of America. What'll they do to us then?|

  They'll send us where we were going in any event—and the Governor General's plan almost certainly has other adherents and may well outlive her. We may be approached about it again, and when we are, we must have an answer prepared. There's sky glow ahead of us. We're pointed south. Keep going.

  Minutes crept by. The stealth lost altitude quickly, but it responded when Peter pulled back, and it flew evenly if noisily through the September night. Peter reached over the hydraulic throttles with his left hand and felt for a pulse on Sophia's neck. It was still there, and blood was oozing from both nostrils.

  |Tough bird. I thought decomp like that would kill her.|

  She didn't get where she is by being fragile.

  |Where do we land?|

  Go back to the same pad, on the Illinois.

  |That may be a challenge.|

  You like challenges.

  Peter had a moment to wonder what the Sangruse Device thought of challenges, and realized that he had almost no idea how the creature came to the decisions it did. He had thought it would demand that they land at a hospital, or at least on open ground. Chicago was below them now, and far ahead, the bristling spires Downtown, with the Illinois highest among them.

  Peter, something's wrong.

  |Something's always wrong.|

  Let go of the hydraulics.

  |Forget it! I saved our shared ass and I'm not going to lose it now!|

  Let them go. I mean it.

  Peter's right hand slackened against his will, and his arm jerked upward, withdrawing his fingers from the emergency throttles. Beside them, Sophia Gorganis stirred, and groaned softly.

  With Peter's hand out of the throttles, the stealth banked west and lost altitude gradually. The fans lost their uniform rumble and began to return to the subtle changes and interplay that was their normal mode.

  Look outside. What do you see?

  America's largest intact city was everywhere, out to the horizons. |Chicago. And empty air.|

  Right. The most rigidly controlled airspace in the world, outside of Ottawa. And we have no electronics. No XGPN. No ping. No way to respond to O’Hare ATC. Why don't we have a PS escort?

  |Ummph. And the plane is flying itself...|

  The conclusion was obvious, but Peter could not bring himself to speak it. Minutes later, the stealth looped once around the Illinois and settled as adeptly as a butterfly to the same pad from which they'd launched, less than an hour earlier.

  As the old saying goes: She took us for a ride.

  The fans went back to a quiet idle. Sophia Gorganis opened her eyes, wiped the blood from her face on one sleeve, and looked Peter hard in the eye. "Good work. You passed. Bigtime."

  "Passed?"

  The woman reached out and touched Peter's chin with one finger. "Drop the ruse if you want, or keep it up. Doesn't matter. The top blew off at nine thousand meters. You stayed conscious, figured out how to find and work the emergency controls of a classified aircraft you were never taught to fly. Yup. You told me exactly what I wanted to know."

  Peter, I've been outsmarted. Horribly! And you...had you not chosen to climb into that aircraft, she would not know what she now knows: That you can remain conscious without oxygen at over nine kilometers altitude; and that you can fly a wounded stealth aircraft on manual hydraulic controls without ever having seen the aircraft or its plans before. Both are impossible, unless you have something very adept living inside of you.

  Peter glowered at the Governor General. "Like what?"

  "Like where to find what I'm looking for. And it's not you, little boy."

  Her smile was infuriating. Finally Peter looked away, unable to find anything useful to say.

  "Now get back inside, take a shower, and get some sleep. Geyl's going to be here in the morning, and you both have work to do. Unless you want to accept my offer."

  Peter, furious, hit the latches for the crash web and threw the hatch up. "No way in hell," he said, climbing out of the stealth.

  "Exactly." Sophia Gorganis tapped the dark command stone in front of her, which came to quick life. The fans gunned smoothly, and Peter watched the supposedly crippled aircraft lift and vanish into the night.

  |That was bad.|

  It's worse. There's more. I sampled her skin when you felt for her pulse. There were significant oligocarbamate residues in every microgram.

  |Uh-oh.|

  The human body cannot create chemicals like that. They can only come from disintegrating third-generation nanomachines—carbamates were abandoned when everyone moved to paraprotein mapped synthesis. She's got small stuff in her too. That would explain how she stayed alive so long without sufficient oxygen. It might explain a number of other things, too.

  |Third-gen, huh? Who's still third-gen?|

  Only one, and perhaps the oddest of them all: Minimus Rex.

  5. Descent Into Hell

  The road to Hell was cold, and had no windows. In fluorescent orange one-piece jumpsuits and bright blue slippers, Peter and Geyl trudged in a long line of convicts through endless tunnels beneath the O'Hare skyport complex, shivering. There were no guards (PS assumed that violent offenders bound for Hell had very little to lose) and yet the columns of transportees marched in near-perfect formations, two abreast. Each wore a bozo, and the bozos all knew where their wearers were supposed to be in column—and as soon as a convict stepped out of alignment with the column, his bozo began forcing foul-smelling synthetic indole molecules into his nostrils. If a transportee persisted, the stink would turn to a choking pepper gas, and after that, rumor held, was something that caused fearsome pain inside their heads. Everyone remained in column.

  They stood in lines to receive plastic ID plates, huge and stiff, hung around their necks with stee
l bead chain. Geyl's expression on her photo was blank, distant; Peter had dared to grimace like a deranged clown, half-hoping the bored 1Earth prison drone behind the thick glass window would object, but no. Peter realized that they just didn't care.

  Why didn't you just stick your tongue out?

  |I will...next time.|

  They stood in yet another line to receive an injection of antinausea drugs from a docslot. No one told them what the shot was for, but Peter instantly recognized its signature feeling of quiet detachment, which was not a bad thing to inject into a column consisting mostly of high-strung and potentially violent young men.

  The transport to orbit was immense, an 1100-seat Vultee Ptero 71. They never saw its exterior. More trudging through gray tunnels took them to one ramp and then another, and finally through the gasket into the craft's midsection, second level of four. The draft out of the craft into their faces was frigid.

  The Ptero 71 was pale gray inside and lacked decoration. They had to crab-walk, stooped and sideways, down the narrow aisles between rows of cramped net seats. Ahead and behind them were grim-looking men who met no one's eyes, and a scattering of women so sparse Peter was only certain he saw two.

  Geyl was playing her role well, so well that Peter began to wonder if her sullenness was genuine. He recalled his outburst in Sophia's office with an inner wince; restraint did not come easy to him. He thought he might draw her out by demonstrating that he was playing his own role as best he could. "You never read much about people being sent to Hell in the media. You'd think they'd let us vent to the press a little, so the young'uns would know murder is a bad idea." His voice was weirdly nasal through the bozo. Few of the other convicts were speaking.

  "Shut up," Geyl snapped. "I don't want to talk about it."

  "Are we being sincere here?"

  "I'm deadly serious."

  She's clearly having no difficulty playing the bitter, depressed wife.

  |Yeah. Just when I start to maybe like her.|

  The Vultee Pteros had been designed for military transport to orbit, but there had been little call for military space missions, and most had remained in OVODS transport service since their deployment. Peter knew the design from his studies, but he had never piloted or even flown in one. Its row of eight zerospike jets breathed air while there was air, and exhaled superheated steam from reaction mass tanks above the atmosphere.

  The rumble of the zeroes became a howl, and then a shriek. When the brakes came off, the Vultee lurched furiously down the runway. Peter heard Geyl's breath hiss out in surprise as the acceleration smashed them back into the uncomfortable net slings the Vultee called seats.

  Peter reached his right hand over and grasped hers, giving it a conspiratorial squeeze. She squeezed back—then when the Vultee threw itself up and away from the runway, her hand tightened around his, and shook with tension.

  Two Gs, the Sangruse Device announced with cool precision.

  The acceleration built and rebuilt. Peter squared himself in his seat, breathing deeply, hearing people groan and gasp all around them. He heard the Sangruse Device announce three Gs, and still it built. Peter marveled that it was launching this hard. The tourists got to orbit at under two Gs—but 1Earth was anxious to be done with them, and maybe—just maybe—this was a bit of sly physical punishment. And who would come back to Earth to complain?

  Four Gs.

  The Vultee arrowed onward. Peter heard the cough and felt the sick lurch indicating that the zeroes had shut their air intakes and had begun vaporizing water from their tanks.

  Four point five Gs.

  Geyl had been squeezing his hand for a long time, and it was some seconds after her grip relaxed that Peter realized she had become unconscious, blood oozing from beneath the green plastic of the bozo covering her nose.

  There were guards at the OVODS staging platform in orbit, who systematically removed their bozos and shoved the transportees into two-meter-wide "hamster tubes"—flexible translucent pipes carrying strong flows of very cold air. Most of the convicts, completely at a loss in zero-G, closed their eyes and rolled up into balls as directed to let the air carry them through the complex. Peter kept his eyes open and watched Geyl closely, who seemed as ashen-faced as all the others. Real, or superb SIS training? Could she have had eighteen years in the SIS without ever making orbit?

  The bloody nose was real—and yet it didn't slow her down. She had mopped it on her sleeve when the guard unlocked the bozo and stripped it away, and had shivered impassively in the cavernous debarkation chamber while waiting for her number to be called.

  Assume it's an act, the Sangruse advised. Assume she could and would kill you if the need arose.

  There was no good response to be made, and Peter made none.

  After a long ride through a second hamster tube, they were exhaled into a wide cylindrical room painted an ugly pale yellow. People continued to arrive erratically for what seemed like an hour—most of them women, with only a handful of men. The Sangruse Device informed him that it was standard OVODS policy to gather whatever women were headed for Hell into a single lander.

  The transportees spaced themselves around the room's circumference, singly and in clots of threes and fours. Most were clinging with both hands to the blue polyweb net attached to the entire inner surface of the room, their faces ashen with suppressed nausea. Some turned their faces toward the wall; many were staring at the hatch in the center of the flat face of the room that by the orientation of signs on the walls was considered the "floor." Only a few appeared to be comfortable in zero-G.

  The air in the room was frigid, and stank of plasticizers and gasket grease. Peter exhaled slowly and saw his breath. Geyl gripped his arm and held herself closer to him. Peter assumed it was not out of affection. Her card spun slowly on the end of its bead chain as she snuggled against his side, shuddering in the cold.

  You'll need food soon, the Sangruse Device told him, obviously doing its best to keep him warm by accelerating his metabolism. When he crashed he would crash hard—and only the Device knew the extent of his reserves.

  The last person to drift in from the tube was an armed OVODS proctor, young and excessively confident. "You board by numbers," he said. "I'll call numbers, and you'll go down the hatch in order by the number on your card. Each seat has a number. It's in yellow on the back cushion; you can't miss it. Push yourself against the seat with one hand and insert your card into the yellow slot on the right hand of the seat. The flight web will secure you automatically. It's that easy. Any questions?" The young man scanned the group contemptuously.

  "Hey, Joe, can we switch seats and be together?" A fortyish woman with one foot hooked confidently into the wall webbing had spoken. A much slighter and younger woman clung to her, arms around her waist and legs around her hips, face buried against the speaker's considerable breasts.

  The proctor shook his head. "You're seated by mass and the lander's assuming you'll be where we put you. You'll plug into the right seat or I'll plug you in, drugged if I have to."

  "Yeah. Have a day, man," the woman said, stroking the hair of her companion.

  The proctor whistled. "All right. Boarding by numbers. One!"

  A gray-faced young woman clambered awkwardly toward the floor on the web, then across to the hatch. She peered down into the hole a moment, obviously disoriented and terrified. "Feet first!" the proctor reminded. The woman nodded, rotated herself like a drunken parallel bars performer, and slipped down into the hatch.

  "Two!"

  Peter watched them go, some confidently, most hand over hand on the webbing, misery in every line of their faces. Only two needed to be drugged: One the slight companion of the fortyish woman who had asked to be reseated, and the other a burly young man with hands and feet knotted in the wall webbing, refusing to open his eyes. The proctor had jammed an atomizer up a nostril of each and snapped a web over them to secure them to the wall while the drug took effect.

  "Eighteen!"

  Geyl l
ooked up to Peter's face, suddenly less indignant and more frightened. Peter squeezed her hand. "Be a man!" he whispered, grinning. The anger came back hard and she broke from him, hauling herself as gracefully as she could manage toward the central hatch to the lander.

  You're so terribly charming.

  |Shut up. I'm acting like a murderer, ok?|

  "Nineteen!"

  Peter nodded. He shoved free of the wall and shot arrow-straight at the hatch, caught one of the handles with the toe of his right slipper, and reached down to grasp the rungs on the access tube. "You need a real job," he told the proctor with a grin and a wink, and shoved himself down the tube toward the lander.

  There were only a few left to be seated after him. Peter drifted hands-free down the tube and into a larger open space that smelled of new electronics. The lander was a lifting body, broad and fairly flat. It had 96 seats embedded in its padded inner wall, in parallel ranks that followed the shallow curve of the body. Mercifully, the lander was warmer than the staging room, though not as well lit. Most of the transportees were in their seats, already webbed.

  Peter spotted Geyl's disheveled hair and toed off in her direction, passing over other transportees who were struggling with their positioning in zero-G or mumbling reassurances to their comrades. This lander would be mostly empty. The handful of women on any transport run to Hell were gathered into the overflow lander, the one holding however many transportees remained after the last full group of 96 had taken their places on the big zigship's lander-dock terraces. Fewer than 45 people all told would be in this lander. The mass calculations had spread them around the lander with a slight bias toward the front.

  He found his seat beside Geyl, who refused to meet his eyes. Peter held himself in place with one hand and plugged his card into the slot beside his right elbow. The flight web frame rotated out of its sheath and pulled him back against the seat's cushions. His arms were free, but the web held him tightly at the top of his chest, across his waist, and over both legs.

  "Looks like you got settled OK," Peter said.