Rifters 2 - Maelstrom

by Peter Watts

  Lenie cocked her head. "You some kind of expert?"

  Vive smiled back. "Lady, this is Yankton! We've been doing electronics since before the Dust Belt. Lins says they even invented botflies here, but Lins slings a lot of slaw. We're supposed to be cramming for our practicums even as we speak, actually, but this sounded like more fun."

  "Fun." Those cold blank eyes—more translucent, Vive realized, than the paste the rest of them wore—stared down at her. "That's the word I would've used."

  A light came on in Vive's head.

  "Hey," she said. "There is something that puts out a bit of a field. Portable, too. It'd be touchy—we'd have to play with its insides or it'd attract all kinds of the wrong attention—but you wouldn't have to be around for that part anyway."

  "Yeah?" Lenie asked.

  "Oh yeah," Vive told her. "No problem."

  * * *

  Les beus had the crowd cordoned off, and were pushing them back across the concourse. The rifters on the edge were getting shocked, of course, but at least nobody'd dropped any gas bombs yet. The crowd moved like an ocean, great sweeping waves emerging miraculously from the constrained jostling of a million trapped particles. The comparison went farther than that, Vive knew: human oceans had backwash, undertow. People could get sucked underneath and trampled.

  She let the currents carry her along. Jen and Lindsey bobbed behind her to either side. Vive had told two friends; they'd told two friends; so on; so on. All around them fission was taking place, just below the surface. You could barely see it at first; people worked their way through the crowd from all sides, tacking against the current until they were just an arm or two away from Vive et al. Glances, nods were exchanged. The local turbulence subsided just a tiny bit as friends and allies anchored each other against the push and pull.

  Within minutes Aviva Lu was the bull's-eye in a crowded circle of calm.

  Three botflies approached in formation a couple of meters above the crowd, reciting the usual riot-act platitudes. Vive glanced at Jen; Jen shook her visored head. The machines cruised past, recessed muzzles dimpling their bellies.

  Jen tugged at her sleeve, gestured: another 'fly coming up the concourse. Vive slipped her own visor over her eyes and magged on the target. No obvious gunports or arc electrodes. Purely surveillance, this one. Glorified note-taker. Vive looked back at Jen, at Linse.

  Both nodded.

  Vive doffed the visor and hooked it over her belt; some things you still needed your own eyes for. Her arms went around Jen's and Lindsey's shoulders, just three ol' girlfriends out for a good time, nothing to see here. The crowd blocked any view of Vive pulling up her legs, now all her weight on the shoulders of her friends, now most of it weighing on the stirrups Jen and Lindsey had improvised by interlocking their hands. The 'fly cruised closer, scanning the crowd. Maybe it was interested in this curious little knot of stability in the Brownian storm. Maybe it was on its way somewhere else entirely.

  If so, it never got there.

  The botfly was out of reach to anyone jumping unassisted from the floor; it was an easy mark for someone boosted by 'dorphderms and a two-stage launch. Jen and Lindsey bounced into a quick squat and heaved, throwing Vive into the air. At the same time, Vive pushed off against their hands. She embraced her inner überchick, endorphins singing throughout her body. The botfly floated into her embrace like a big beautiful Easter egg. She wrapped her arms around it and hugged.

  The 'fly never had a chance. Built entirely of featherweight polymers and vacuum bladders, its ground-effect lift couldn't have been more than a kilo or two. Aviva Lu shackled it like ball with no chain, brought it down into the arms of the welcoming crowd.

  A roar went up on all sides. Vive knew that wordless sound, and she knew what it meant: First Blood.

  Not the last, though. Not by a long shot.

  They smashed the botfly against the floor, shielded by a swaying forest of human bodies. They went after the lens clusters and antennae first; they'd all be sockeye if they didn't get the 'fly offline real fast. It wasn't easy. Modern tech had long since figured out how to combine light with strong, and evolution hadn't come up with the egg-shape for no reason either. Jen and Linse had their toolkits out.

  On all sides, the sounds of escalation.

  Shouts turned to screams, rising briefly then lost in the ambient roar. Something exploded nearby. An electronic buzzer honked in the distance like a quarantine siren; official notification that the pigs were on the warpath.

  Pre-game show over. First period underway.

  Something went

  BANG!

  right in Vive's ear; she jumped, stumbled against a pair of legs. Jen, a little too eager to cut through the carapace, had ruptured one of the vacuum bladders. A high, pure tone trumped the sound of the riot. Vive shook her head.

  A hand on her shoulder; Linse in her face, mouthing got it over the dial tone in Vive's head. Jen held up a necklace of optical chips and a battery, strung along a mist of fine fiberop. Behind her, their buffer guard staggered against some conducted impact. The space began to collapse around them.

  Go.

  Vive grabbed the necklace and stood. A human storm surged and collided on all sides; she could barely see over it. Fifteen meters away a phalanx of botflies was bearing down like the Four Horsemen. Some joker in springsoles trampolined into the air and tagged the one in the lead. A tiny lightning bolt arced between jumper and jumped; Springsole Boy grand mal'd in midair and dropped back into the mêlée.

  The botflies, undeterred, were heading right for Vive.

  Oh shit. Surge pushed her backward. Her feet tangled in the carcass of the dismembered floater. The opening in the crowd had completely collapsed; bodies pressed close on all sides, kept her from falling. Vive lifted her feet off the ground. The crowd carried her as though she were levitating. The wreckage passed beneath.

  Still the botflies came at her. We weren't fast enough. It got off a signal, it sent a picture--

  She could see their electrodes. She could see their gunports. She could even see their eyes, staring coldly down at her behind their darkened shields…

  Right overhead.

  Past.

  They're after Jen and Linse. Vive twisted around, following the flies in their pursuit. Shit, they just left, they don't have enough of a lead, they're gonna—

  Right out of left field, another botfly charged into view and rammed the leader.

  What—

  The head of the phalanx skidded sideways, out of control. The attacking botfly spun and charged the next in line. It came down from above, hitting its quarry and knocking it down a meter or so.

  Far enough. The crowd surged up and engulfed it in a hungry, roaring wave.

  Bad move, that. A surveillance 'fly was one thing; but those other ones were armed.

  Yelps. Screams. Smoke rising. The submerged botfly ascended triumphant from the crowd. The crowd tried to pull back from that epicenter, ran into its own seething resistance; a wave propagated out across the riot, the panic spreading even if the panic-stricken couldn't.

  The rogue botfly was charging again. Its targets were starting to regroup.

  What the hell is going on? Vive wondered. Then: lucky break. Don't waste it.

  Ten or fifteen meters to the medbooths. Solid chaos in the way. Vive started pushing. There were still people nearby who were in on the plan; they moved back as much as they could, trying to part the Red Sea for her passage. It was still start-stop all the way—too many out of the loop, too many simply gone rabid on the battlefield. Even half the people who had grabbed the bone had dropped it again.

  "I saw her."

  A K voice, calm but amped loud enough to hear over ambient. Vive threw a glance back over her shoulder.

  The rogue botfly was talking. "I saw her come out of the ocean. I saw what—"

  One of the assault 'flies fired. The rogue staggered in midair, wobbled dangerously.

  "—I saw what they did on the Strip."
/>   The medbooth slid open. Clarke stood framed in the doorway.

  Vive leaned close, handed over the necklace. "Keep this up near your chest!" she shouted. "It'll mask the signal!"

  The rifter nodded. Someone spilled between them, shouting and swinging indiscriminate fists. Lenie hammered back at that panicky face until it disappeared beneath the surface.

  "They sent a tidal wave to kill her. They sent an earthquake. They missed."

  Lenie Clarke turned to the voice. Her eyes narrowed to white featureless slits. Her mouth moved, framing words drowned in the roar:

  Oh, shit…

  "We gotta go!" Vive shouted. Someone pushed her right up against Lenie's tits. "This way!"

  "They're burning the whole world to catch her. She's that important. You can't—"

  Squeal. Feedback. The sound of sparking circuitry. Suddenly the rifter seemed rooted in midair.

  "—You can't let them have her—"

  The four horsemen cut loose. The rogue spun down into the crowd, gushing flame. Fresh screams. The horsemen regrouped and resumed their original course.

  "Come on!" Vive yelled. Lenie nodded. Vive led her away along the wall.

  The next alcove led into a public washroom. It was jam-packed with rifter wannabes and trapped pedestrians desperate to wait out the party. They were still for the most part, huddled like refugees under a bridge, listening to the muted pounding coming through the walls.

  Two friendlies held one of the stalls. They'd already knocked out its ceiling panels. "You Aviva?" one of them asked, blinking rapidly over fake eyecaps.

  Vive nodded, turned to Clarke. "And this…"

  Something indefinable passed through the room.

  "Shit," said one of the friendlies, very softly. "I didn't think she was real."

  Lenie Clarke tilted her chin in a half-nod. "Join the club."

  "So it's true then? The burnings and the Big One and you going around raping corpses—"

  "Probably not."

  "But—"

  "I don't really have time to compare notes," Clarke said.

  "Oh—right, of course. Sorry. We can get you to the river." The friendly cocked her head. "You still got a diveskin?"

  Lenie reached behind her own shoulder and tapped the backpack.

  "Okay," said the other friendly. "Let's go." She braced on the toilet, jumped, caught some handhold in the overhead darkness and swung up out of sight.

  The first friendly looked around at the assembled huddlers. "Give us fifteen minutes, you guys. The last thing we need is a whole procession banging around in the crawlspace, right? Fifteen minutes, and you can make all the noise you want. Assuming you want to leave the party, that is." She turned to Vive. "You coming?"

  Vive shook her head. "I'm supposed to meet up with Jen and Linse over by the fountain."

  "Suit yourself. We're gone." The remaining friendly stirruped her hands, held them out to Clarke. "Want a boost?"

  "No thanks," the rifter said. "I can manage."

  * * *

  Aviva Lu was a veteran of civil unrest. She rode out the rest of the action against walls and in corners, the low-turbulence areas where you could keep your bearings and your balance without being trampled. Les beus brought out the heavy artillery in record time; Vive's last view of freedom was the sight of a botfly crop-dusting the crowd with halothane. It didn't matter. She went to sleep smiling.

  When she woke up, though, she wasn't in Holding with everyone else. She was in a small white room, windowless and unfurnished except for the diagnostic table she awakened on. A man's voice spoke to her through the walls; it was a nice voice, it would have been sexy under happier circumstances.

  The man behind the voice knew more about Vive's role in the riot than she'd expected. He knew that she'd met Lenie Clarke in the flesh. He knew that she'd helped trash the botfly. Vive guessed that he'd learned that from Lindsey or Jennifer; they'd probably been caught, too. But the man didn't talk about Vive's friends or anyone else. He didn't even seem all that interested in what Lenie Clarke had said, which surprised Vive quite a bit; she'd been expecting a real third-degree, with inducers and neurosplicers and the whole shot. But no.

  What the man seemed really interested in was the cut over Vive's eye. Had she got it from Clarke? How close had the contact been between the two of them? Vive trotted out the obvious comebacks with their obvious lesbian overtones, but deep down she was getting really worried. This voice wasn't playing any of the usual intimidation games. It didn't threaten, or gloat, or tell her how many synaptic rewires it was going to take to turn her into a good citizen. It just sounded very, very sad that Aviva Lu had been dumb enough to get involved with this whole Lenie Clarke thing.

  Very sad, because—although the man never actually said it aloud—now there was really nothing he could do.

  Aviva Lu sat trembling on a table in a white, white room, and pissed herself.

  Crucifixion, with Spiders

  This is Patricia Rowan. Ken Lubin is plugged into the kiosk just down the hall from your office. Please tell him I want to see you both. I'm in the boardroom on Admin-411.

  He will not give you any trouble.

  Twenty-six hours fourteen minutes.

  Sure enough, Lubin was cauled at the terminal quad by the stairwell. Evidently no one had challenged his presence there.

  "What are you doing?" Desjardins said behind him.

  The other man shook his head. "Trying to call someone. No answer." He stripped off the headset.

  "Rowan's here," Desjardins said. "She—she wants to see us."

  "Yeah." Lubin sighed and got to his feet. His face remained impassive, but there was resignation in his voice.

  "Took her long enough," he said.

  * * *

  Two prefab surgeries, wire-frame cubes cast into bright relief by overhead spotlights. Their walls swirled with faint soap-bubble iridescence if you caught them at the right angle. Otherwise, the things inside— the restraints, the operating boards, the multiarmed machinery poised above them—seemed completely open to the air of the room. The vertices of each cube seemed as arbitrary and pointless as political boundaries.

  But the very walls of the boardroom glistened in the same subtle way, Desjardins noted. The whole place had been sprayed down with isolation membrane.

  Patricia Rowan, backlit, stood between the door and the modules. "Ken. Good to see you again."

  Lubin closed the door. "How did you find me?"

  "Dr. Desjardins sold you out, of course. But surely that doesn't surprise you." Her contacts flickered with phosphorescent intel. "Given your little problem, I rather suspect you nudged him in that direction yourself."

  Lubin stepped forward.

  "More things in heaven and earth, Horatio," Rowan said.

  Something in Lubin's posture changed; a brief moment of tetanus, barely noticeable. Then he relaxed.

  Trigger phrase, Desjardins realized. Some subroutine had just been activated deep in Lubin's cortex. In the space of a single breath, his agenda had changed from—

  Mr. Lubin's behavior is governed by a conditioned threat-response reflex, he remembered. He's unlikely to consider you a threat unless…

  Oh Jesus. Desjardins swallowed with a mouth gone suddenly dry. She didn't start him up just now. She shut him down…

  And he was coming for me…

  "—would have only been a matter of time anyway," Rowan was saying. "There were a couple of outbreaks down in California that didn't fit the plots. I'm guessing you spent some time on an island off Mendocino…?"

  Lubin nodded.

  "We had to burn the whole thing out," the corpse went on. "It was a shame—not many places left with real wildlife any more. We can ill afford to lose any of them. Still. It's not as though you left us a choice."

  "Wait a minute." Desjardins said. "He's infected?"

  "Of course."

  "Then I should be dead," Lubin said. "Unless I'm immune somehow…"

  "You're not. Bu
t you're resistant."

  "Why?"

  "Because you're not entirely human, Ken. It gives you an edge."

  "But—" Desjardins stopped. There was no membrane isolating Patrician Rowan. For all the available precautions, they were all breathing the same air.

  "You're immune," he finished.

  She inclined her head. "Because I'm even less human than Ken."

  * * *

  Experimentally, Lubin put his hand through the face of one cube. The soap-bubble membrane split around his flesh, snugly collared his forearm. It iridesced conspicuously around the seal, faded when Lubin kept his hand completely immobile. He grunted.

  "The sooner we begin, the sooner we finish," Rowan said.

  Lubin stepped through. For an instant the entire face of the cube writhed with oily rainbows; then he was inside and the membrane cleared, its integrity restored.

  Rowan glanced at Desjardins. "A lot of our proteins—enzymes, particularly—don't work well in the deep sea. I'm told the pressure squeezes them into suboptimal shapes."

  Lubin's cube darkened slightly as the sterile field went on, almost as if its skin had thickened. It hadn't, of course; the membrane was still only a molecule deep. Its surface tension had been cranked, though. Lubin could throw his whole considerable mass against that barrier now and it wouldn't open. It would yield—it would stretch, and distort, and sheer momentum could drag it halfway across the room like a rubber sock with a weight in the toe. But it wouldn't break, and after a few seconds it would tighten and retract back down to two dimensions. And Lubin would still be inside.

  Desjardins found that vaguely comforting.

  Rowan raised her voice a fraction: "Undress please, Ken. Just leave your clothes on the floor. Oh, and there's a headset hanging off the teleop. Perhaps you could view that during the procedure."

  She turned back to Desjardins. "At any rate, we had to tweak our people before we could send them to the rift. Retroed in some genes from deepwater fish."