by Peter Watts
“Hi again,” he said. A bubble of blood grew and popped at the corner of his mouth. “Miss me?”
“Holy shit.” She hurried over and helped him towards the MI. “What happened to you?”
“ ’Nother r. A Big r. Fucking capital r. Took my bike.” He shook his head; the gesture was stiff and clumsy, as if rigor mortis were already taking hold. “That other K around? Taka?”
“No. I’ll look after you.” She guided him to Miri’s right mouth, took his weight as he sagged onto the extended tongue.
“You really a doctor?” The teenager managed to look skeptical through all the gore. “Not that I care,” he added after a moment. “You can check me over any time.”
Finally it sunk in: Miss me?
Clarke shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I’ve seen a lot of people lately. I don’t know if I’d recognize you even without all the facework.”
“Ricketts,” the boy said.
She stepped back. “You brought—”
“I brought that stuff that’s gonna kill ßehemoth,” he said proudly through cracked and puffy lips.
You brought the stuff that’s going to kill us all, she thought.
It shouldn’t have been any kind of dilemma. Get him into the MI. Clean him up, fix the physical injuries, confirm the presence of any new predator eating him from the inside out.
Maybe he’s clean. All the contaminated stuff was sealed up in that bag, maybe he never had direct contact—
Confirm Seppuku. Isolate the victim. Call for extraction.
Hope to God that if he’s got it, he can’t breathe it on me...
“Lie back. Get your feet up.” She was at the rear panel almost before Ricketts had taken his feet off the ground. She stabbed the usual icon, heard the familiar hum as Miri swallowed. Clarke told the vehicle to close both mouths and run the standard diagnostic suite.
She left him in there while she sprayed herself down with disinfectant. Overkill, probably. Hopefully. She was wearing the requisite sterile gloves, and the ’skin of her tunic protected her under Ouellette’s borrowed clothing—
Shit. The clothing.
She stripped it off and bagged it for incineration. The rest of her diveskin was in her backpack, stashed in the cab. The forsaken pieces, retrieved, wriggled back into place, seams sealing together into a comforting second skin. Diveskins weren’t built with antipathogen properties explicitly in mind, but the copolymer dealt with salt ions as a matter of course; it had to keep out anything as large as a living cell.
When she got back to Miri’s rear panel, the diagnostic cycle had finished. Rickets was suffering from a broken cheekbone, a hairline fracture of the left tibia, second-degree concussion, borderline malnutrition (better than average, these days), two impacted wisdom teeth, and a moderate roundworm infection. None of that was life-threatening; most of it could be fixed.
The diagnostic suite did not include a scan for Seppuku. Seppuku didn’t exist in the standard database. Ouellette had cobbled together a hasty, separate subroutine in the wake of her discovery. It didn’t do much—no helpful breakdown into first/second/end-stage categories, no list of associated macrosymptoms. No suggested course of treatment. Just a blood count, really. Clarke didn’t even know how to interpret that simple number. Was there such a thing as a “safe” level for Seppuku?
Zero, she assumed. She tapped the icon to start the test. Ricketts twitched in the little spycam window as Miri drank a few more drops of his blood.
It would take a while to run the analysis. Clarke forced herself to focus on Ricketts’s other problems in the meantime. The roundworms and the teeth could wait. Targeted vasodilators and calcium suppressants eased the concussion. Broken bones were almost trivial: plant microcharge mesh into the affected areas to crank up osteoblast metabolism. Clarke had been doing that almost since the day she’d become a rifter.
“Hey!” Rickett’s voice sounded tinny and startled through Miri’s intercom. “I can’t move!”
“It’s the neuroinduction field,” Clarke told him. “Don’t worry about it. It just keeps you from jerking around during the cut-and-paste.”
Beep.
And there it was. 106 particles per milliliter.
Oh Jesus.
How long had he been wandering around in the woods? How far had he spread it? The person who’d beaten him up: was he spreading it now, had he invited Seppuku in through the raw oozing skin of his knuckles? How many days before he discovered how much he’d really paid for a lousy motorbike?
Isolate the vector. Call in a lifter.
A lifter. It seemed so strange to even contemplate. She had to keep reminding herself: they’re not monsters after all. They’re not fire-breathing dragons sent down from the heavens to burn us out of existence. They’re working for the good guys.
We’re on their side now.
Still.
First things first. Ricketts had to be—
decirculated
—isolated until someone came by to collect him. Problem was, there weren’t too many ways to do that. The MI would be useless for other field work as long as it kept him sequestered, and Clarke seriously doubted whether Freeport had had hot-zone isolation facilities even before it fell into ruin.
He can’t stay here.
She watched the monitor for a few moments, watched Miri’s jointed limbs and laser eyes putting Humpty together again. Then she called up the anesthesia menu. She chose isoflurane.
“Go to sleep,” she whispered.
Within moments, Ricketts’ wide, nervous eyes fluttered closed. It was like watching a lethal injection.
“Do you know who I am, you miserable fetus-fucker?” the demon spat.
No, she thought.
“I’m Lenie Clarke!”
The system crashed.
“Yeah,” Clarke said softly. “Right.”
She traded a dark view for a brighter one. Phocoena’s viewport looked out on a muddy plain, not quite featureless; the muddy tracks of tunneling animals, the holes of invertebrate burrows stippled the bottom. A lone crab scuttled lethargically in the dim distance.
The ocean overhead was murky green, and growing brighter. The sun must be rising.
“What...?”
She hung the headset on the armrest and turned in the copilot’s seat. Phocoena was too small to warrant a dedicated med cubby, but the fold-down bunk on the starboard side pulled double-duty in a pinch. It tucked away into the same kind of molded indentation that held the bunks on the opposite bulkhead; unlike its counterparts, though, its thicker base bulged from the wall in a smooth distension of plumbing and circuitry. When in use it folded down like a wide, short drawbridge, hung by twin monofilament threads spooled from its outer corners. Those threads, the edges of the pallet itself, and the overhanging bulkhead formed the vertices of a little tent. Isolation membrane stretched across the planes between.
Ricketts was trapped within. He lay on his side with one arm flopped against the membrane, distending it outward.
“Hi,” Clarke said.
“Where’s this?”
“We’re underwater.” She climbed back from her seat into the main cabin, keeping her head low; the curving hull didn’t leave a lot of headroom.
He tried to sit up. He had even less headroom than she did. “What am I, you know...”
She took a breath. “You’ve got a—a bug. It’s contagious. I thought it would be best to keep you isolated.”
His bruises were already healing, thanks to Miri’s attentions. The rest of his face paled behind them. “The witch?” And then, remembering: “But I brought you that cure, right...?”
“The cure wasn’t—all we’d been hoping for,” Clarke said. “It actually turned out to be something...else...”
He thought about that a moment. He pushed his splayed fingers against the membrane. The membrane stretched, iridescing.
“You saying...you saying it’s like another disease?”
“Afraid so.”
; “So that explains it,” he murmured.
“Explains what?”
“Why I been so weak the last coupla days. Prob’ly still have my bike if I’d been just that much faster.” He frowned at her. “So you go around broadbanding how this germware kicks ßehemoth’s ass and how we’re supposed to like, collect it and all, and it’s really just another bug?”
“Sorry,” she said softly.
“Fuck.” Ricketts lay back on the pallet and threw one arm over his face. “Ow,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
“Yeah, your arm’s going to be sore for a bit. You were pretty badly beat up, the MI can’t fix everything just like that.”
He held up the limb and examined it. “It does feel a lot better, though. Everything feels better. Thanks.”
Clarke forced a smile.
He was up on his elbows, looking from the smaller cage into the larger one. “This whole set-up isn’t bad. Way better than that priestly meat wagon.”
It wasn’t, of course. Phocoena’s med facilities were rudimentary at best, far below what the MI could offer. “I’m afraid you’ll have to stay in there for a while,” Clarke said apologetically. “I know it’s cramped, but the onboard’s got games and shows, help you pass the time.” She gestured at a headset hanging from the roof of the nook. “I can give you access.”
“Great. Better’n an oven.”
“Oven?”
“You know.” He tapped his temple. “Microwaves. Give you a fine buzz if you jimmy the doors and stick your head just so.”
Good trick, Clarke mused. Wish I’d known it when I was a kid.
Then again, maybe I did...
“What if I have to shit?” Ricketts wondered.
She nodded at a convex button set into the recessed bulkhead. “The pallet converts. Push that when you have to go. It’s pretty straightforward.”
He did, then let out a little yelp of surprise as the midsection of the pallet slid smoothly away underneath him. His ass bumped down on the wide rim of the bowl beneath.
“Wow,” he whispered, impressed out of all proportion. Another press of the button and the pallet reintegrated.
“So what now?” he asked.
Now you get to be a lab rat. Now you’ll go to some place where machines cut pieces out of you until either you die, or the thing inside of you does. Now, you’ll be grilled on how long you hung around in Freeport, how many others you might have breathed on, how many others they might have. They’ll find out about that asshole who beat you up and maybe they’ll want to interview him. Or maybe not. Maybe they’ll just decide it’s already gone too far for pleasant interviews and nice individual extractions—because after all, if we have to sacrifice you to save Freeport, surely we also have to sacrifice Freeport to save New England now, don’t we? That’s the greater good for you, kid. It’s a sliding scale. It’s concentric.
And nobody’s life is worth shit when they slap it onto the table.
She’d roll the dice. Maybe hundreds would die in flames. Maybe only Ricketts would, in pieces.
“Hello?” Ricketts said. “You here?”
Clarke blinked. “Sorry?”
“I said, what now?”
“I don’t know yet,” she told him.
Paranoid
Aaron had led to Beth. Beth had led to Habib, and Habib had led to Xander, and the whole lot of them had led to twenty thousand hectares of wasted New England countryside being put to the flame. And that wasn’t all: According to the chatter on the restricted band there were at least three other operatives sweeping the field further south, Desjardins’s preference for low profiles notwithstanding.
Eight days now, and Seppuku was living up to the hype. It was spreading faster than ßehemoth ever had.
Xander had also led to Phong, and Phong was fighting back. Lubin had him cornered in the mouth of an old storm-sewer that drooled slimy water into the Merrimack River. The mouth was a good two meters in diameter, set into a concrete cliff perhaps three times that height. It had a tongue, a triangular spillway widening out towards the river, flanked by rising abutments that held back the banks to either side. The spillway constituted the only clear avenue of approach and was slippery with brownish-green scum.
The mouth also had teeth, a grate of metal bars set a meter back from the opening. They kept Phong from escaping underground, and had forced him to fall back on his one high card: an antique firearm that shot bullets of indeterminate caliber. Lubin trumped him twice over on that score; he carried a Schubert active-denial microwave pistol that could heat flesh to 60°C, and a Heckler & Koch rapid-fire PDW that was currently loaded with mitigated conotoxins. Unfortunately there was way too much earth and concrete for the microwaves to penetrate from Lubin’s present position, and getting a clear shot with the H&K would involve exposing himself on the slimy slope of the spillway.
It shouldn’t have mattered. Under normal circumstances it would still be the furthest thing from an even match, even granting Lubin’s rusty marksmanship after five years. Even though Phong’s refuge was in shadow, and the sun stabbed directly into Lubin’s eyes whenever he peeked around the corner. Those all made the shot trickier, no question. Still. Lubin was a professional.
No, what really skewed the odds was the fact that Phong seemed to have a thousand bodyguards, and they were all attacking Lubin at once.
He’d scarcely noticed them on approach: a cloud of midges hovering over a patch of resistant greenery on the embankment. They’d always been completely harmless in Lubin’s experience. He’d dispersed them with a wave of his hand as he passed through, his attention on the concrete barrier that cut the riverbank just ahead...and in the next instant they’d attacked, a swarm of mosquito-sized insects with piranha-sized attitudes.
They bit, and they distracted, and they broke both his concentration and his stealth. Phong, stealing a drink from the sewer, had seen him coming and squeezed off a near miss before ducking back under cover. He’d almost escaped entirely, but Lubin had plunged through the insectile onslaught to the edge of the drainage apron, just in time to trap his quarry back against the tunnel.
“I’m here to get you to a hospital!” he called. “You’ve been exposed to—”
“Fuck you!” Phong shouted back.
A squad of dive-bombing insects attacked Lubin’s hand, almost in formation; the little bastards had followed him. He slapped down hard. He missed his attackers but welcomed the sting of the impact. He unrolled the gloves from the wrists of his isolation skin and slipped them on, juggling the Schubert, then reached over his shoulder for the hood.
The velcro tab on the back of his collar was empty. His hood was probably hanging off some low-lying branch in the woods behind him.
And he was going up against someone who’d been exposed to Seppuku for two full days. Lubin allowed himself a muttered, “Shit.”
“I don’t want to hurt you!” he tried again. Which wasn’t exactly true, and getting less so. The desire to kill something was certainly circling around his self-control. More insects attacked; he crushed them between hand and forearm, and reached to wipe the smashed body parts off against the river bank. He paused, briefly distracted: it was hard to be certain, but those crushed bodies seemed to have too many legs.
He wiped them off and focused on the immediate task. “You’re coming with me,” he called, his voice raised but level. “That’s not up for discussion.” Insects have—right. Six legs. He waved off another assault; a line of pinpricks lit up the back of his neck. “The only issue is whether you come now or later.”
“Later, stumpfuck! I know whose side you on!”
“We can also discuss whether I’ll be taking you to a hospital or a crematorium,” Lubin muttered.
A squadron targeted his face. He slapped his forehead, hard. His hand came away with three tiny carcasses flattened against the palm. Each had eight legs.
What has eight legs? Spiders? Flying spiders?
Hunting in packs?
He wipe
d his palm against a patch of convenient vines matting the embankment. The vines squirmed at his touch.
He pulled his hand back instinctively, shocked. What the—
Tweaked, obviously. Or some kind of accidental hybrid. The foliage clenched and relaxed in peristaltic waves.
Focus. Keep on track.
More dive-bombers. Not quite so many this time. Maybe he’d swatted most of the swarm already. He felt as if he’d swatted a hundred swarms.
A scrabbling, from beyond the barrier.
Lubin peeked around the abutment. Phong was making a break for it, scrambling along a dry strip of concrete edging the far side of the spillway. Startling graffiti decorated the wall behind him, a stylized female face with white featureless eyes and a zigzag moniker: MM.
Phong saw him, fired three wild rounds. Lubin didn’t even bother to duck; his microwave was already set on wide beam, too diffuse for a quick kill but easily strong enough to reheat Phong’s last meal along with most of the gastrointestinal tract that was holding it. Phong doubled over, retching, to land on the thin skin of wastewater and the frictionless slime beneath it. He slid diagonally down the spillway, out of control. Lubin put one foot on a convenient dry patch and leaned out to catch him as he passed.
The Airborne Spider Brigade chose that exact moment for its last hurrah.
Suddenly Lubin’s face and neck were wrapped in stinging nettles. Overextended, he struggled for balance. Phong sailed past; one flailing leg careened against Lubin’s ankle. Lubin went over like a pile of very angry bricks.
They slid off the spillway into freefall.
It wasn’t a long drop, but it was a hard landing. The Merrimack was a mere shadow of its former self; they landed not in water but on a broken mosaic of shale and cracked mud, barely moistened by the outfall. Lubin got some slight satisfaction from the fact that Phong landed underneath him.
Phong threw up again on impact.
Lubin rolled away and stood, wiping vomit from his face. Shards of shale snapped and slipped beneath his feet. His face and neck and hands itched maddeningly. (At least he seemed to have finally shaken the kamikaze arthropods.) His right forearm was skinned and oozing, the supposedly-unbreachable isolation membrane ripped from palm to elbow. A knife-edged splinter of stone, the size of his thumb, lay embedded in the heel of his hand. He pulled it free. The jolt that shot up his forearm felt almost electrical. Blood welled from the gash. Mopping at the gore revealed clumped particles of fatty tissue, like clusters of ivory pinheads, deep in the breach.