by Lisa Smedman
"Depending upon the superstitions of the era, the offspring is either worshipped or reviled. It may be honored as a child of the gods, or feared as the spawn of the devil."
"Which would explain why Jane bobbed her ears," I muttered to myself.
I shook my head, glad that wolves had no such prejudices. My mother had enough intelligence to be puzzled by my strange shape, but I'd still had the same scent, and still was her cub, even if I suddenly turned soft and hairless and pink, with hands instead of paws. She'd suckled me just the same, along with her other cubs.
I wondered how Jane's parents had reacted to their "changeling" child. What century had she been born in? Given her magical abilities, she was lucky not to have been burned at the stake as a witch.
"Is it possible for an elf born in another century— a spike baby—to still be alive today?" I asked.
"Possibly," Dark Father said. "There was a brief burst of chatter in the shadow community around that very question several years ago, back in 2054.I managed to find some data uploaded by the person who'd been in the thick of the discussion: a genetic researcher who went by the tag of Doc. She was the one who coined one of the terms you asked me to dig up information on: the 'stopwatch complex.'
"In her years spent researching the elven genome, Doc discovered a gene complex on a specific chromosome that arrests the natural decay of biological systems. She named it the 'stopwatch complex' because it seems to literally stop the clock—to halt the aging process. According to Doc, the complex was present in all metatypes but was only fully developed in elves. And it required high levels of mana to activate."
He paused to let me think that one over. "So it's possible for an elf to be ... immortal," I said slowly.
"It would appear so. But remember that this is all just conjecture. You can't believe everything you hear on the Matrix, especially in the shadow files." His eyes bored into mine. "Or can you?"
It was clear that he wanted to hear all about Jane—about the spike baby I'd uncovered. But my mind was on other things. As Mareth'riel Salvail, an employee of New Dawn Medical Research, Jane had been doing research into longevity. I'd learned that much from Crazy John. Could she have been the "Doc" who'd posted the information on the stopwatch complex to the Matrix shadow files seven years ago? If she'd compromised New Dawn's research, she must have really slotted the corporation off. She'd have needed good reason to take that risk—maybe she'd done it in retaliation for being tricked into testing a drug that accelerated aging. Which made her one of the good guys, after all.
"What were you able to find out about New Dawn Medical Research?" I asked.
"The usual corporate gloss, which you've probably already got," Dark Father said. "The New Dawn Corporation is based in Portland and has three major divisions: New Dawn Biotechnologies, which produces vat-grown and cloned body tissue; New Dawn Pharmaceuticals; and New Dawn Medical Research, which specializes in synthetic hormone and enzyme treatments."
"Any specifics on their research?" I asked.
Dark Father nodded. "I guessed, given the two pieces of data you asked for, that New Dawn might be trying to produce a longevity treatment. I couldn't crack the databanks of the New Dawn Corporation— they aren't even on the Matrix. And I wasn't able to uncover the names of all of the shareholders of the corporation—the corp is really secretive about who its principals are, for some reason. But I could download research data compiled by a company New Dawn later acquired: Geron, a California biotech company that was heavily into anti-aging research in the late 1900s.
"The theories of why the body ages haven't changed much since the turn of the millennium—the period in which Geron's researchers made their greatest strides. We seem to be genetically coded to die. Living cells divide a set number of times, then become senescent. This happens because each cellular division shortens the cell's telomeres—chunks of DNA that separate gene-bearing chromosomes from one another, in order to ensure faithful genetic reproduction during cellular division. Eventually the telomeres become too short to do their job. The cell is unable to divide and reproduce itself, and the body dies.
"Just before the turn of the millennium, the Geron Corporation announced that its researchers had isolated a chemical which, when added to human cells in the lab, stopped them from aging. The company's stock jumped forty percent overnight. But Geron hadn't succeeded in producing an immortality drug. They were missing one key ingredient in the formula: magic."
"A company doing similar research today would have succeeded," I guessed.
"And if they did, they could name their own price for the treatments," Dark Father added.
The thought was mind-blowing. A drug that would allow you to live forever, barring death by accident or injury. The people wealthy enough to afford it would become immortals—gods even.
"Has New Dawn's stock taken any steep rises lately?" I asked.
Dark Father shook his skeletal head. "Quite the contrary. Their stock has fallen to an all-time low. The government of Tír Taimgire has just sold its share of the corporation—a whopping twenty-five percent interest. And you'll never guess who the buyer was."
He was right. I couldn't guess. Most days I barely had a credstick to my name. I didn't exactly follow the business tridcasts.
"Who?" I asked.
"The dragon Lofwyr. Or rather, one of the shell companies held by Saeder-Krupp Corporation's North American biotech divisions."
"But Lofwyr is on the Tír Taimgire Council of Princes," I said. "You mean he was selling the Hr's quarter-share of New Dawn to himself?"
"Technically, no," Dark Father said. "Lofwyr abstained from the vote. But when the Council eventually traced through the tangle of holding companies behind the buyer, that little technicality didn't make much difference. Tír Taimgire's council meetings have been even more strained than usual this past week."
The pieces were starting to fall into place now. It looked as though the Tír government had learned of Jane's sudden appearance in Halifax, nearly four years after her "death" in the plane crash of 2057. Fearful that the UCAS had learned of New Dawn's illegal drug tests on UCAS soil, they'd dumped their shares of the New Dawn Corporation. And the buyer was ... Lofwyr.
I let my paranoia run wild for a moment. Had the great wyrm somehow frigged with the formula of the drug so that it had the opposite effect from what its developers intended—causing it to accelerate aging, instead of prolonging life? Everybody knew how devious dragons could be—and I wasn't being speciphobic when I said that. It would be just like Lofwyr to push New Dawn to the brink of an international scandal, then contain the damage once he'd gotten what he wanted: shares in a corporation that would soon be the most lucrative on the planet, if the drug it had developed really did convey immortality.
If I was right, this was a plot that was measured in years, maybe even in decades. Which was exactly how dragons operated. And meanwhile the poor friggers who had been "vaccinated" with an age-acceleration drug had been racing toward an early death—and an innocent woman had been stripped of her memories and sense of self in a Lone Star jail.
Dark Father had been watching me while I thought all this through. His yellowed eyeballs stared at me, never blinking. They had a knowing look—he'd obviously already figured all of this out for himself. Except for the part about Jane.
"Thanks," I said. "You've put a lot of the pieces together for me."
Dark Father tipped his hat. "Any time."
He waited expectantly.
"Maybe when this is over, I'll tell you the whole story," I added.
He bared glossy black teeth. "I look forward to hearing it."
Then he pushed back the bar in front of us—the one that, on a real roller coaster, would be holding us in our seats. "Goodbye," he said—and was gone.
The roller coaster was suddenly back on the tracks. A subsonic rumble filled my ears and the wooden framework of the coaster track flashed past in a blur. The smart drink the Binary had served was sitting heavy in my
stomach; I didn't want to linger here a nanosecond longer than I had to. Grabbing the brake on the roller coaster that served as the chat room's exit icon, I slammed myself back into the real world. I heard the ear-piercing squeal of metal sliding on metal as the "brakes" of the coaster caught.
I blinked, re-orienting myself to the real world. Then I pulled the trode rig from my head and ejected my credstick from the telecom. The monitor screen was still playing its newscast. I was just about to stand up and leave when my breath caught in my throat. I'd caught a glimpse of the rigger I was looking for—the one who'd been driving the speed boat on the night Jane was kidnapped. Not in the bar—on the trid.
The newscast was originating from Prince Edward Island, an island to the north of Nova Scotia that at one time had been Canada's smallest province. P.E.I. was in the news again—big time. I watched, fascinated, as the story unfolded.
A few months ago, a group of ultra-radical Native activists on the island had issued a statement to the press, declaring the former Canadian province the sovereign nation of Abegweit—the original Native name for the island, which loosely translated as "land cradled on the waves." They actually believed they had a shot at becoming part of the Native American Nations, and threatened a magical assault on the same scale as the Great Ghost Dance of 2017 if their demands weren't recognized. They based their claim to sovereignty on the fact that Dunkelzahn—the dragon who'd purchased the bulk of the island's real estate, back in the '50s—had, in the will that was discovered after his assassination in 2057, left the island "to the people of the UCAS." The Natives figures that meant them.
The rest of the UCAS had pretty much laughed them off at the time. But now the radicals had everyone's attention. They'd gone and blown up Confederation Bridge, for frig's sake.
Back when it first opened to traffic in 1998, Confederation Bridge had been pretty big news. It was the first "land link" to Prince Edward Island, replacing the ferries. Nearly thirteen kilometers long, the bridge offered a crossing time of under ten minutes— a pretty big deal when you considered the half-day it used to take to get from the island to the mainland by ferry, and the delays that could occur when the winter gales blew up and the ferries stopped running for days at a time. The old-timers that the tridcasters were interviewing could still recall the fanfare that had taken place when the bridge first opened. And now they were shaking their heads in disbelief at its destruction.
The tridcast kept showing the aftermath of the explosion over and over again—a crumpled ruin of broken concrete and twisted metal girders. They also kept replaying shots of the tremendous flash of magical energy that had been picked up by the bridge's surveillance cameras. And front and center in the shots that followed, straddling a motorcycle that had narrowly missed plunging over the twisted ruin at the center of the bridge, was the rigger who'd been driving the speedboat on the night Jane was kidnapped.
He'd obviously managed to disappear before the trid snoops got there with their cameras—the total footage of him lasted no more than a second or two before he wheeled his motorcycle around and headed back to safety. As the bike departed, I saw a woman on the back of it, her arms around the rigger's waist. She looked elderly and frail, with long white hair and wrinkled skin. And Native—like the rest of the smugglers.
The rigger and his passenger had been crossing to the mainland, coming from Prince Edward Island. They had been on the bridge, just outside the zone of the explosion, seconds before it occurred. Coincidence? I didn't think so.
I turned up the volume and listened to the voiceover that was accompanying the trideo images. It was the usual yada yada of uninformed speculation and background stories that had only tenuous connections with the blast. But one word jumped out at me: Eskwader.
The trids were re-airing a story the news station had recorded years ago. Long before the Native radicals announced their intention to declare Prince Edward Island the sovereign nation of Abegweit, there had been a grass-roots movement to return towns throughout the Maritimes to their original Native names. One of those names was Eskwader—Mi'kmaq for "the fishing place." Or as it was properly known: Murray Harbor, Prince Edward Island.
So that was where Jane had done the phony vaccinations, back when she was posing as a doctor with the UCAS Department of Health. I had a sudden flash of inspiration. When Dass's magic had jogged that memory, Jane had used the Mi'kmaq name for the town, even though it's still known by its Anglo name of Murray Harbor—the name that appears on the maps. The smugglers who had tried to kidnap Jane were all Mi'kmaq; maybe they had family members or friends in that town. Perhaps they'd kidnapped Jane to take her back there, so the villagers of Murray Harbor could take their revenge.
The fact that the rigger was jandering around on Prince Edward Island seemed to confirm this. I wondered if he'd delivered Jane there while the smugglers continued taking care of biz, smuggling in their latest shipment of paras.
I knew where to look for Jane, now: in Eskwader. I just hoped she'd still be alive when I found her.
16
The UCAS military came down hard on Prince Edward Island after the destruction of the Confederation Bridge. Not only was it a terrorist act—it was also a flagrant and violent use of unlicensed magic. Even though it had been four years since a magical attack had taken the life of UCAS President Dunkelzahn, the destruction of the Confederation Bridge opened old wounds, brought back old memories. It made a mockery of President Haeffner's "law and order" promises, and could not be ignored. In a dramatic show of strength, UCAS airborne troops were sent in by attack helicopter to secure Charlottetown, and local teams from the Magical Task force began astral sweeps, looking for the Native terrorists who had triggered the magical spells that destroyed the bridge.
The explosion had taken place while I was on-line at the Binary in Halifax. It only took me twenty minutes to get to Truro by high-speed train, but I spent another three hours busing it from there to the coast. The passenger ferries at Caribou had shut down for the night—even if they had been running, security in the wake of the bombing would have been intense. Instead I headed for Pictou, a fishing town that lies just across the strait from Prince Edward Island.
I knew a shifter there—a woman by the name of Lucie who had briefly attended the same residential school that I had. She'd been a shy, timid girl. We'd become friends after I bit one of the boys who had been bullying her. I'd gotten a strapping from the headmaster as a result, for shifting into animal form; I still had scars from the braided silver wire he'd used on my back. But just standing by and watching the older kids reduce Lucie to tears would have been worse.
Lucie and I had kept in touch sporadically over the years since her family had pulled her from the school. She'd been one of the more fortunate ones; she'd gotten out early.
As a baby, Lucie had been taken in by an Acadian family that had been amazed to find a "human" infant swimming alongside their fish boat in the open ocean. They'd allowed the government to enroll her in the residential school only reluctantly, and had forced the school to return her to her home after some of the abuses began to surface.
Lucie's family not only didn't mind having an adopted daughter who was a shifter—they welcomed it. Lucie used her seal form to locate the dwindling schools of cod, helping her new guardians to become a true rarity in the Maritimes: a wealthy fishing family. Her parents had even tried to legally adopt her, but of course the UCAS didn't allow it.
Lucie had her own boat now: a converted fish boat that she used both as a place of residence and for her whale-watching tour business. I knew she wouldn't be happy about being rousted out of bed at two in the morning, especially at the height of the tourist season. But tourism was going to take a nose dive in the wake of the bombing; my offer to rent her boat might be the last one she'd see for the next few weeks.
It took me a while to find Lucie's live-aboard. All I had was the name: Selkie. I didn't even know which wharf it was tied up at. When I at last found the boat, the door to the cab
in was locked up tight and there was no answer to my knocks. Then I realized where Lucie must be: like me, she liked to sleep in animal form. Of all of the kids at the school, she'd been the most uncomfortable with sleeping indoors in a human bed.
Shifting into wolf form, I picked up her scent and followed it along the waterfront. From time to time an interesting smell distracted me—the musky odor of a rotting fish or the sharp tang of a seabird. But I stuck to my purpose. I found Lucie curled up on the rocks beside the public quay, her whiskered nose tucked under her flippers. Her muzzle was black, the only dark spot on a seal pelt such a perfect, glossy white it practically glowed against the gray rocks. Her fur was covered in sea spray, but thanks to her blubber she didn't feel the cold. Her clothes lay beside her in a heap. I shifted into human form and shook Lucie awake gently.
"Lucie? It's me, Romulus. From the residential school."
I didn't really need to tell her who I was. As soon as she opened her large round eyes she looked me over with her astral vision. Even though we hadn't seen each other in years, she recognized me by my wolf form.
She immediately shifted into human form so we could talk. She was a large woman, maybe one hundred and thirty-five kilos, with wide-webbed hands and a body made smooth by a uniform layer of fat. The hair on her head was long, glossy, and white, and the rest of her body was also covered by a downy-fine layer of white hair. Her eyes were all pupil, dark and wet.
"Bon soir, Romulus. How is za police business?" Lucie had a thick Acadian accent; she hadn't been at the residential school long enough to have it erased.