by T. J. Bass
Moses continued to walk casually with the clots of listless citizens.
‘Did the dispenser report us?’
‘No,’ explained Toothpick. ‘For all it knew we were just one of the maintenance teams. Perhaps it was the routine Watcher circuits. Your clothes are rags covered with dust and chlorophyll. Your skin is thick, a better insulator – probably reads way down on the thermal scale.’
Moses quickened his pace. Several hours later they were Outside again – back on their north-by-northeast course.
More weeks of travel carried them through Lake Country. The air was much colder now. Moses wore several layers of issue tissue. They invaded other shaft caps as the need arose. Always they triggered Watcher circuits, but never quickly enough for Security to arrive. With Toothpick in his fist, Moses had little fear of the fat, sluggish guards that patrolled in the hive. Their quarterstaffs and throwing nets were enough for handling docile citizens, but it took a couple of well-placed arrows to bring down a buckeye. And there were no arrows inside the hive.
On frozen nights Moses sought the warmth of the plankton tubes. Food production in this area was all greenhouse – both environmental heat and energy for photosynthesis had to be provided. It was a hostile place for a human. All he could see were the misty domes sweating frost on their insulated outer walls and the pipes pulsating with coherent light. The ground was permanently frozen.
Moses huddled against an outcropping for protection against the wind. He reached under his outer layer of clothing for his water bag and a food bar.
‘Smell brine in the air,’ he said, drinking.
Toothpick was propped against the rocks. He flexed his membrane charge and rotated his optic eastward.
‘We’re getting close to the sea,’ said the cyber. ‘The haze blocks the horizon at your wavelength, but I can see the shore – about seven miles.’
Moses chewed slowly.
‘Not much sign of life around here. Just the machines making food.’
Toothpick rotated back and looked at his human.
‘And expensive food too. The energy cost per calorie must be almost prohibitive,’ said Toothpick. ‘These units would be much more efficient in a tropical sea.’
Moses nodded. It was easy to picture these pulsating green pipes in a less hostile environment – a lush coral reef or a tropical seabed. But setting it up would probably fall on his caste – the Pipe people. He shrugged.
‘The theory is easy, but in practice it would be impossible. The hive is just too short on Pipes – skilled, five-toed Pipes. The four-toed Nebish is a nice docile citizen, but not too many of them want to crawl around inside a sewer or a pump. Our caste is just barely able to keep existing machinery functioning. New projects will be impossible until we get the Pipes.’
‘Five-toed Pipes?’ repeated Toothpick.
Moses chewed thoughtfully for a moment.
‘Yes, five-toeds. But where can the Big ES find five-toeds? There aren’t many left on the planet – except for the Eyepeople. And they’re not really suited for this population density.’
Toothpick flexed restlessly in the frozen air.
‘Hurry and finish eating. I’m going to take you someplace where there are hundreds – no, thousands of five-toeds. Citizen five-toeds!’
Moses wrapped the rest of the frozen food bar and put it in a deep pocket to thaw. Picking up the cyber he started toward the odor of brine. Two hours later they were peering through the mists at a pounding surf. Beyond that lay a foam-flecked gray ocean.
The years weighed heavily on Kaia. From his niche in Filly’s Mountain he watched fugitive bands of buckeyes cross the valley headed eastward. At night he pondered lights in the northern sky – hazy blues and yellows – dancing pastels. It was a time of wonder. He descended the crag to speak with a tattered clan who camped for the night – two score adults and as many children.
‘Why travel together?’ he asked. ‘The hunters will find you.’
‘Olga protects us,’ said the elder.
‘Where do you travel?’
‘To the river – The River. We come from the western sea coast. Our trek will take nearly a year. There is to be a great Coming Together. You are welcome to join us.’
Kaia studied the old man’s face. Never had he seen such excitement – such rigid purpose. They talked through the night. At dawn the clan prepared to move on.
‘Come with us,’ invited the elder.
‘Snynovial edema puckers my gait.’
‘We will travel slowly – because of the children. Your limp will not delay us.’
Kaia hesitated.
‘This place you speak of – Olga’s place. It is a good place?’
‘Olga has prepared it for us. It is full of things long gone from Earth – animals and plants known to only our ancestors’ ancestors. It is a good place.’
Kaia glanced at the distant mountains to the east.
‘It is some valley – you think? A very distant valley safe from hunters’ arrows?’
The elder looked, not at the horizon, but at the sky.
‘It is very distant, but not of this world – it is in the heavens. Far from the hunters.’
Kaia looked up at the sky nervously – blue, empty, cold. He shook his old, tired head.
‘No.’
‘But why? Olga awaits her five-toed men.’
Kaia sat down heavily.
‘I was born here. Here I will die. These have been my hills and my father’s hills. Probably his father’s before him. The hunters will not drive me out. I will stay. My bones will seed the same soil that I grew up on. It is my home.’
The elder’s fervor pushed his hand to Kaia’s shoulder. He tugged on the old man. ‘Get up. Come with us. Olga waits.’
Fatigue showed through Kaia’s eyes as he answered.
‘Sorry, Eld. Take your people on their trek. A year to The River you say? I am old. I will not live even that long. Olga has come too late for me. Mayhap my spirit will be in Olga’s land before you.’
Moses carried Toothpick along the seashore until they came to a dock. An underground tubeway surfaced on the frosty tidal flats. A robot boat was taking on a load of man-sized sausage casings. They climbed on.
The boat, a twin-hulled thirty-footer, had its bulge of neurocircuitry at the top of a short mast. The open cargo space contained a score of the eight-by-three-by-three-foot casings. Each casing was attached to a small console by a segment of tubing.
‘Looks like a cargo of live melon vines,’ said Moses lightly.
He leaned against one of the casings and tried to see through its opalescent skin. The pressure of his elbows slowly pressed into the skin until he met something firm. He stepped back abruptly, almost dropping Toothpick.
‘What’s in there?’
‘You’re about to find out. Here comes a human being. Try to open a casing. I think there is a latch on the end opposite the tubing.’
Moses crouched and glanced toward the bow. A human bundled in a thick, hooded suit was walking from casing to casing with a checklist. Moses fumbled with the latch and lifted the lid.
‘A body—’
‘No. A patient. Quick! Get inside.’
An angry sea lashed the cargo deck with cold spray. The wet casings squeaked against each other. Moses crawled into the casing and let the lid close.
Silence. He squirmed for comfort.
Later he lifted the lid an inch to allow stale air to escape. Whitecaps still tossed foam onto the deck. The hooded figure was gone.
‘Where—?’
‘She’s below deck,’ said Toothpick, ‘In the Attendant cabin enjoying a nice warm drink and looking female.’ The little cyber was eavesdropping on the boat’s life-support circuits. ‘We’ll be en route for a day and a half. You might as well catch some sleep. Stick me out under the lid. I can keep an optic on things and give you some air.’
Moses tried to relax.
‘Are you sure this guy is alive? He feels so cold.�
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‘He’s alive – in suspension. But he won’t be for long if you go to sleep on his tubing. That coil carries his perfusion fluids. He doesn’t metabolize much at these temperatures – but he does metabolize. Those tubes exchange ions and gases with the sea water. You shouldn’t press on them for more than a few hours at a time.’
Moses rolled over and gently lifted the coils of two-inch transparent tubing up onto the patient’s chest. One end was fixed to a coupling at the head end of the casing. The other end entered the patient’s leg just above the knee. A similar tube ran into him from the opposite side.
Moses slept while Toothpick scanned.
The second day out they began passing frequent masses of drift ice and spotty fog banks. Moses closed the lid when they approached a floating dock. Machines offloaded.
Moses watched the silhouette – like that of a giant praying mantis – approach. Its two big arms cradled Moses’ casing, unmindful of the increased weight. Two smaller arms uncoupled the tubing from the boat’s LS console and reattached it to a smaller unit on the back of the robot’s mantis-like abdomen. The offloader rotated its head, turned carefully on the wet deck and moved onto the gently rolling dock.
Moses watched the vague shadows through the translucent skin of the casing. The robot rolled on wide soft wheels up a long ramp and into a cavelike hallway. The stability and quiet told him that he must be in a hollowed-out cliff overlooking the sea. Probably an island hidden from the dock by the fog.
An hour later Moses was rocking gently in quiet dark waters with thousands of casings. He popped his lid for air and was drenched with icy brine. Leaving the casing, he waded around in the waist-deep water groping for the wall that the echoes told him was there. A tangle of perfusion tubules tied up his feet. Floating, shifting casings blocked his path. Cold cut through his soaked issue tissue clothing.
Toothpick produced a beam of visible light that led him to a ladder. Dripping and shivering, he stood on the walkway looking over acres of casings.
‘These are recent cases,’ said Toothpick. The light stabbed about. ‘Probably all four-toed. Let’s check deeper in the caves. The older cases should be back that way – to your right.’
Moses moved on – teeth chattering. Finding an Attendant’s cubicle unoccupied, he turned up the heat and changed clothes. The dispenser delivered a liter of hot brew under Toothpick’s orders. Feeling stronger, he moved on again.
‘This looks like a likely area to start in,’ said Toothpick. Moses had searched for hours, examining cubicles, index numbers and casings. At last they stood before what must have been the most ancient cubicle in the cave. The door handle was worn ovoid and smooth by countless hands seeking the warmth inside.
‘The control boards will be close by. Check that far wall.’
Moses walked up to the crusted stony wall. Under a layer of grit he found the flat indicator discs. They glowed a dull green.
‘Must be a million of these,’ exclaimed Moses glancing up and down the cave wall. ‘What do they mean?’
‘A million patients,’ said Toothpick. ‘Green means the metabolism is stable – yellow means trouble – red, death.’
Moses settled down in the warm comfortable quarters while Toothpick checked the memory banks of the Life Support center. This section’s census showed just under a million patients – tumor cases. Old ones. The most recent were from 1220 AO – over a thousand years past.
‘High incidence of five-toeds here,’ said Toothpick.
‘How do we proceed?’
‘Insert me into one of those sockets over there. Then get out of here. The Big ES isn’t going to like what I have to do. Security will be all over this rock in a few days.’
‘You want me to leave you?’
‘I’m a kamikaze Toothpick – expendable. I have to stay until it is over. You must escape – travel south to the river—’
‘What’s over? What river?’
‘Oh-oh. Company.’
A hooded figure entered, suspecting nothing. The protective suit was thick and relatively soundproof. It carried its own entertainment channels to combat the deathly silence of some caves and the hypnotizing drum of the surf in others. The Attendant for millions of suspended had no need to be alert.
While Toothpick worked quietly in the socket, Moses crept up on the new arrival. He grappled with the loose-suited form.
‘Tie her into that chair with that segment of tubing. Tell her to be still or I’ll zap her,’ ordered Toothpick.
Moses raised an eyebrow.
‘Zap?’
The Attendant relaxed. ‘Never mind. I heard him – or it. I don’t know why you’re here – but if you’ve brought your own rations you’re welcome. It gets pretty lonely around— Say! What’s going on? Look at all those amber lights on my panel. There must be a dozen of them—’
‘Tie her up!’ repeated Toothpick, twitching in his socket.
She sat open-mouthed while yellow lights sprang up all over the panel. Several times she wrenched on her bonds, but Toothpick immediately made threatening sounds in her direction. Moses quietly warned her that Toothpick was no ordinary meck – he had killed many of the four-toeds.
The frost melted from the cubicle’s outer walls. Distant crashes of falling icicles echoed against the damp stone walls. The first red light appeared . . . a death.
The Attendant struggled against the knotted tubing, spitting hatred at Moses Eppendorff.
‘Murderer! Why in the name of Olga are you doing this? What right have you to come here – killing my patients?’
Moses was puzzled. He watched the red lights glow. Death. These patients were mostly five-toeds. True, they all had tumors – fatal malignancies. But they were alive and safe in their suspension coffins. Why was Toothpick interfering with the LS controls? He was killing them.
Toothpick recorded the peculiar set of Moses’ features, but he was too occupied to explain. All his circuits were busy altering incoming sensor readings. He was deceiving the LS meck brain with Ice-Age temperature readings. The cave’s homeostatic mechanism released heat to combat the factitious cold. Slowly the waters warmed. With each seven-Fahrenheit-degree rise the metabolic rate of the suspended doubled. Perfusion pumps strained to supply oxygen and nutrients for the more active enzyme systems. Robot Resuscitators splashed awkwardly about in response to the multiple yellow signals. Thousands were sickening with the accumulations of their own metabolic wastes. Moses detected the odors of ammonia, indole and skatole.
More red lights appeared. Protein Harvesters moved through the tidal caves picking up the deceased and carrying them to the synthesizers.
The Attendant continued to vilify Moses with passionate asperity.
‘What are you – some kind of crazy crusader come to take vengeance? There can’t be any political enemies here – this is a cancer ward, not a psych ward.’
More red lights.
She took a strained deep breath and tried reasoning with him.
‘If you are an assassin – why kill them all? Tell me who you want. I’ll help you find him.’
Moses frowned at her. Expediency. She would finger one to save the rest. He glanced expectantly at Toothpick, who seemed more relaxed now that the red lights were coming on.
The cyber spoke from his socket.
‘We are not assassins in search of a single target victim. We do not intend the death of anyone – but unfortunately many will die. Moses, you had better leave now. If you are caught here it will be the Mass Murder charge. Take her with you. I’ll need about three days to complete my work here. I won’t be able to come with you.’
Moses hesitated.
‘Couldn’t I wait? Together we might be able to—’
‘No. Run. I have this LS robot fooled. But I must sit right in his sensory unit to do it. There are nine other LS mecks on the island. They are probably picking up the increased heat already. Their sensors are free. Warm water and air from this section will alert them. Crews from the
mainland can get here in two or three days. After that Security will seal the place. If you are linked with me the Big ES will find you eventually – it is very efficient that way. Remember what I told you – travel south to the river.’
Moses carried the bound Attendant lightly on his shoulder as he trotted back to the dock. The boat – a mere class ten – accepted his verbal orders without question. He set her on her feet in the cargo section as they pulled out to sea. She struggled and sobbed.
‘Thousands of red lights—’
The boat trembled with her words. Moses motioned for her to be silent. He didn’t want the craft’s meck brain confused. Her eyes brightened and she spat at him. Scowling, he grabbed the front of her suit, twisting and pressing his knuckles into her sternum.
‘Go ahead,’ she dared. ‘You were real handy back there in the Dundas Caves – killing sleeping patients. You aren’t man enough to handle someone awake and kicking.’
Her cries pulled the boat off course. He grabbed her with both hands and jerked her off her feet. Through the cloth he felt her heart racing. He lifted her over his head and stepped to the railing. Elbows still bound behind her, she watched the gray, ice-flecked sea rush by. She struggled and screamed more insults. Her heart rate increased. He looked up into her face and saw wild bright eyes and a wet mouth. She was enjoying this!
Moses dunked her into the icy brine of the craft’s wake and held her up to the cold blast of the wind. She stiffened and fell silent. He carried her below deck. This put the ship on a steady course south. In the warm cabin – bundled and dry – she quietly held a hot cup of broth with both hands. She seemed relaxed, almost satiated by the pains of his rough handling. He stood before her, shaking his fist.
‘You’re crazy – you know that? Repeat all that hysteria and you’re going to get hurt again. Now just sit tight. I’ll give Toothpick the two days he needs, then I’ll let you go. Meanwhile, we’re stuck on this boat together. It’s up to you whether you take a regular bath in that ocean out there.’
Her sullen expression had melted away. She pouted for a moment, and then seemed to accept her situation. She used the refresher, found dry garments and toyed with the dispenser – ordering a flask of grenadine – sweet, aromatic pomegranate liqueur.