Blue War: A Punktown Novel

by Jeffrey Thomas

  Stake had been nodding to urge Henderson along. He knew all this. It wasn’t really anything new; there were even massive skyscrapers throughout Punktown grown from synthetic living material.

  “Bright’s approach is the best that’s been developed. In the past, generally this kind of organic matter was grown over a metal skeleton, and that substructure would be covered in a mesh impregnated with current to induce the growth. Bright’s buildings don’t need to grow over any kind of framework, and they generate their own growth without need for current.”

  “Right. Bluetown is feeding off the jungle on Sinan. It digests cellulose and whatever other organic matter gets in the way. It’s burning along like a forest fire.”

  “And almost as fast. Anyway, like in the older approach, this organism ends up solidifying into something like coral. Essentially it’s only alive while it’s growing – when the cells are reproducing. As the growth progresses, what it leaves in its wake is dead matter, like bone. And that’s what people ultimately live inside: skeletons. Bright’s stuff is smart, like I said. It’s programmed to leave channels and openings in the walls for the integration of plumbing and cables, access panels for utility maintenance, and so on.”

  “But it’s not so smart if it’s running wild like this. Do they know what caused it to happen?”

  “No, they don’t. And it keeps on spreading. What should have been a little condo village for a few hundred people is turning into a whole fucking city. A lot of these structures are immense; two hundred floors and more. I couldn’t believe the extent of it myself until I went out there and flew over it the first time.”

  “And all of it is blue because...?”

  “It was just the color scheme Bright and his designers chose. The other Jin Haa condo units they’ve done were all in shades of orange; you know, the color of their flag. This one, being deep into the forest, he figured would be nice to do in blue. It’s blue, all right. Crayon blue.”

  “Why retain the color but not the original blueprint? Did it start out as the village and move on to the city, or start out as the city from the onset?”

  “The city.”

  “But is it inventing this city as it goes along? Where does it get the layout?”

  “We thought it was, at first. We thought it was just randomly producing sample architecture that it had been exposed to through net transmissions it might have received, maybe through connection to the computer station that initially set the process in motion. But finally, one of our people recognized a particular building. It wasn’t apparent, at first, because these things look so different in this coloration, and in this setting. But the building was distinctive.”

  “What was the building?”

  Henderson paused to further the dramatic effect. “It’s a library with two big statues out front, that serve as front columns. Art Deco-type women, holding twin globes that are supposed to be Earth and Oasis.”

  “Wait a minute...”

  “Yeah. You know it, because you lived on Judas Street a few years back, didn’t you? It’s the library on Judas Street. Right here in Punktown.”

  “Are you saying this city is a copy of Paxton?”

  “Yes. It’s been confirmed. An amazingly detailed copy of Paxton. It isn’t reproducing unlicensed, unregistered structures – such as homeless people and mutant gangs and so forth might put together, in between or on top of legally zoned buildings – but it’s copying just about everything else. Occasionally a building here or there that should exist doesn’t, and that might serve as a clue. It might indicate that there’s a time stamp to the information it’s accessing. It might be dated.”

  “My God. Punktown.”

  “The name we were using for the city before, in our internal communications, was Simulacra. Because of Simulacrum Systems. Of course, we weren’t calling it that in the media, because giving the city a name implies that the thing is legitimate, here to stay, and that concept does not go over well with anybody, especially the locals. But anyway, since we figured out it’s supposed to be Punktown, we’ve taken to calling it Bluetown. And that name has leaked out. That’s why you’ve heard of it. But you didn’t know what it referenced beyond the obvious.”

  “But, Jesus, Punktown...it’s huge. It will overwhelm everything if it grows to full size. How much of that has it accomplished so far?”

  “In two months, Bluetown has achieved an astonishing ninety-five square miles. That’s astonishing because it’s about a fifth of the four-hundred-seventy square miles the city of Punktown itself covers. And Punktown has an approximate population of sixteen million citizens. So Bluetown has already reproduced enough of itself to house over three million people. That’s a lot of cellulose this monster is gobbling up. A lot of both Jin Haa and Ha Jiin forest consumed. But not just forest. Villages, farms. Temples. And now, it’s closing in on the city of Di Noon itself. Its growth might be impeded by having buildings in its path instead of forest to nourish it, but we don’t know exactly what will happen when the two cities collide. There might still be enough organic matter under the ground to push this thing on and on, bulldozing everything in its path. And if it does mean to reproduce Punktown in its entirety, then it will have to grind Di Noon out of existence. Take its place.”

  “Christ.” Stake didn’t know how long he’d been wagging his head. He turned his eyes toward one of the VT screens, watched the nude Giggle Mice as they scampered deliriously through their paint-splashed maze, like adorable giants rampaging through a psychedelic dollhouse city.

  “And that’s the start.”

  Stake faced Henderson again. “The start?”

  “It’s not what I want you there for. What I need you for – what I wanted to ask you to think about, I mean – is something we just found in Simulacra. It hasn’t gone to the media yet, but it will leak out anytime now.”

  “Which is?”

  “Something that was discovered two weeks ago by a Ha Jiin security patrol on their side of Bluetown. They did the right thing, and told our people about it so we could go in and investigate. Three cloned bodies, inside one of the buildings. Two dead, but one viable, and in the form of a child. A human child.”

  “You mean human as in Earth human, not Sinan human?”

  “Yes. An Earth-type human.”

  “And three clones got into this building how?”

  “They grew inside the building, apparently. Unless someone wired them up to the smart matter, it would seem the smart matter itself fostered the growth of the clones.”

  “What? You’re saying this Simulacrum technique grew three human beings? How could it do that? That’s a fuck-load lot more complex a structure to grow than the coral shell of some building.”

  “We don’t know, but nevertheless, that seems to be the case. The programming of cellular reproduction that runs through the smart matter seems to have been communicated to these humans cells and led to their reproduction, as well, through some kind of connection Bluetown made with what we figure must have been human remains it encountered in its path.”

  Stake nodded. “Ohh...yeah. Human remains. MIAs, then.”

  “It would make sense. This matter is chewing its way across the countryside, sucking up its living fuel, and along the way it finds three Colonial Forces soldiers, forgotten there since the Blue War, either buried naturally under forest refuse or buried by our guys or the enemy during the engagement. The city absorbs their remains and it sparks an odd reaction. Two clones come out dead – maybe because the remains were of men who’d been too badly mutilated, and the matter inadvertently let that fact influence it.” Henderson snorted. “‘Inadvertently,’ like anything this stuff is doing can be called purposeful. Anyway, most remarkable of all, one of the clones is alive and awake and for some reason, a little boy of say five-years-old. I guess if the clone hadn’t been disconnected from the smart matter, and grown to fruition, it would have been an adult.”

  “Is the child cognizant?”

  “Yes, but w
ith a mind like an infant.”

  “God, it’s just amazing. I wonder if the clone had grown to adulthood, if enough of the brain plasticity would have been reproduced that it would have at least a few fragments of memory, enough to tell us who it is. Because, since you said you figure these are MIAs, I’m going to assume you haven’t found any identification.”

  “Right, no dog tags or anything like that. But without a brain drip of long chain molecules, with the clone’s original memories encoded in them, I’m afraid we wouldn’t have gotten more than a shadow or two out of him even if he was allowed to mature before he was disconnected from the smart matter. We could continue his maturation ourselves, but to what end? Like I say, we’d get shadows at best. And of course, if allowed to continue aging in the natural way, the child will never have anything for memories of his original. His developing brain plasticity will be entirely unique as his life experiences differ.”

  “Whew,” Stake said, and sipped his coffee for a taste of something more familiar.

  “The connection I’m referring to, between the clones and the smart stuff, was a net of fine veins or roots that entered the flesh, but so minutely at their contact point that when the veins were severed, they left no wounds in the clones’ skin – just these little nubs like the base of a stem, that atrophied and broke off the live child, leaving no trace.”

  Stake made an impatient brushing motion to get to another point. “But it doesn’t make sense. If this city can make a human clone after it digests some remains in its path, why only these three? Considering the amount of land it already encompasses, shouldn’t it have reproduced other clones, too? Okay, maybe not Ha Jiin or Jin Haa dead down in their burial tunnels, but what about other undiscovered war dead?”

  “Who knows? Every building hasn’t been explored yet.”

  “But not just people; why wouldn’t this thing have reproduced about a gazillion dead animals by now? The earth has to be full of remains of all kinds of organisms. Why just these three?”

  “That’s all part of what’s being investigated, Jeremy. By the CF, and Bright’s Simulacrum Systems team, and some Ha Jiin and Jin Haa scientists too, for what that’s worth.”

  “And so why me? What are you asking me to do, here, Rick?”

  Henderson leaned his tall frame forward, as if the veterans’ post might contain Colonial Forces spies, posing as nostalgic old drunks. “My commanding officer is Colonel Dominic Gale. My impression is that he’s not exactly enamored of me. I think he sees me as an intrusion, or a threat. Maybe he takes my assignment as an indication that his superiors don’t have confidence in his ability to sort this out and deal with it. Anyway, the fact is he’s not friendly, and he’s not cooperative. And his people are afraid of him, so they’re loyal to him and all but useless to me.”

  “I see. So you’re in need of a friend on Sinan.”

  “I’m in need of a guy who knows Sinan. And I’m in need of a talented investigator. And I know that you’re both.”

  “But I’m not a scientist, Rick. You want me to figure out how the city pulled this off, and brought that kid to life?”

  “No. I want you to tell me who this kid is. And the two clones that didn’t make it. They’ve got to be MIAs, Jer. They’ve got families. People who need to know about what happened here.”

  “You said it’s going to leak to the media?”

  Henderson gave a little smile. “Yeah. I’ll see to that.”

  “Huh. And why will you?”

  The smile faded quickly. “I don’t trust Gale. I’m afraid I don’t trust the Colonial Forces at all, or the Earth Colonies embassy in Di Noon. If this didn’t leak to the public, there’s no telling what would become of that clone. Destroyed in the course of study, or as an inconvenient anomaly that can’t be comfortably explained? Anyway, I didn’t want to take chances. He’s a person, Jer. He has loved ones out there. At least, his original did. If he ends up being unwanted by them, and if they want the clone destroyed – well, better that should be on them, than on me. I have to do as much as I can to at least give him that chance.”

  Stake grinned. “Why Rick – I think you’ve found yourself a new salamander after off.”

  Henderson lifted his black coffee. “Wipe my smile off your face.”

  “My...?”

  “You’re starting to look pretty ugly, my friend. You’re starting to look like me, now.”

  “Dung,” Stake said, flicking his eyes away. “I never learn.”

  But Henderson kept his eyes fixed on his friend. “What do you think, Jer? Again, I hate to ask you to come to Sinan. Then again, I hate to see you with a bar stool up your ass, sucking down the Zubs.”

  “You’re right about that,” Stake said. “There is no good place for me to be.”

  “I have a hotel room. I need to go back to my base tomorrow night. You have until then to think about it. If it’s too much, believe me, I understand. Believe me.”

  “I am between cases,” Stake said, as if speaking to himself.

  “No, don’t say anything now. Think about it tonight. I’ll call you tomorrow. Just do me one favor?”

  Stake hazarded a glance at his old friend. “Hm?”

  “Turn your damn phones on, will ya?”

  “Will do, sir.” Stake gave the officer a salute.

  Henderson looked embarrassed. At first, Stake thought it was about the salute, until Henderson explained, “You’re right about the salamander, Jeremy. See how intuitive you are, even with some brews in you? I’ve given the kid a nickname.”

  “Brian,” Stake completed for him.

  TWO: THE CALL

  Within the past year Jeremy Stake had had to move from his Forma Street apartment to one a mere block removed from the Choom ghetto called Phosnoor Village. Watt the bartender, when Stake had mentioned this to him, had suggested that Stake was a masochist. Hadn’t Forma Street been a bad enough neighborhood? Stake had then asked Watt where he lived, in a penthouse in Beaumonde Square? This was Punktown, after all. For the most part, it didn’t make all that much of a difference.

  He had needed to relocate because of a case he had accepted, something rather out of the ordinary for him. A female of the Stem race had wanted to leave her husband and flee Oasis with two sisters. A radical undertaking indeed. It was the custom of the Stems not to allow those of other races to lay eyes upon their women. Supposedly it was due to their immeasurable beauty. After all, female Stems were voluptuously as thick around as a broom handle, white in color, with three lower limbs and three upper limbs, like immense walking stick insects. The males were taller at seven feet, with crimson-colored bodies thin as a pencil, but it was a mistake to underestimate them; they were renowned as warriors. By tradition, the males were required to punish those who inappropriately caught sight of their women – and the women themselves, if viewed – with death.

  Rebellious modern women, these three. Stake had been successful in arranging transport for the Stem females to Earth. He had then picked them up in his hovercar and driven them to the teleportation center, had waited there until he saw them safely off the planet.

  But the husband of the married sister, and their own two brothers, had found out that the women had hired an outsider to help them escape, and had managed to track Stake down. They had even come to his apartment on Forma Street, which doubled as his office, though he never accepted clients there in person. The result of this visit was that Stake had been hospitalized for an arm injury (now fully healed), and the two brothers had escaped alive. Stake’s killing of the husband had been deemed self defense.

  Still, he had been receiving death threats ever since. He always met with potential clients in a public setting, such as a café or their place of business, and a few times he had suspected that a trap was being set for him and had declined to meet. He had recently turned down a job from a Kalian man. The gray-skinned Kalians were one of the few truly humanoid races, and thus not related to the Stems, except in that they treated their females in
a similar way: a controlling abuse disguised as reverence. Stake wondered if he were becoming too paranoid now, suspecting that a Kalian might be aiding the Stem brothers in trying to lure him into an ambush.

  Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to get off Oasis for a little while, after all.

  But of course, that wasn’t his primary reason for contemplating Rick Henderson’s offer. Stake wasn’t about to kid himself. He knew it had more to do with Thi Gonh. The Earth Killer.

  His current flat was a suite of rooms in a decommissioned destroyer, one of several space vessels transformed into apartment complexes in what had once been the Phosnoor Shipyard. Improvements in teleportation over the past few decades had made starcraft increasingly obsolete – obsolete like the vets Bobby and Wally, who rented rooms in this old beast themselves and had told Stake about it. Its outside still bristled with the dismantled remains of its guns and sensors. Inside, the walls bore rows of heavy rivets, the white enamel paint thick and cracked with age. Stake slept in a lower bunk, bolted to the floor, the upper mattress heaped with his clothes. Right now, first coffee of the day in hand, he paced in and out of his several connected rooms. He paused at a series of monitors set into a wall. One screen was black and dead, one whispered with static, but two were operational, giving him a view of the hall outside his flat and a view of the shipyard outside. It was gray and wet from last night’s rain, the city skyline misted and phantasmal. He had read in a book once that on Earth, in centuries past, there had been reports of ghostly mirage cities as seen from places once known as Alaska, North Africa, Ohio, the Orkneys. He remembered that article when he looked at the city on days like this. The mirage cities had invariably been described as beautiful. Well, Stake thought even Punktown might be considered beautiful from a distance.