Ribofunk

by Paul Di Filippo

A thought came to him. He spoke to the Farm.

  “Hill Top.”

  “Yes?”

  “Any intruders?”

  “The perimeter sensors report the passage of no creature massing more than ten ounces.”

  Ten ounces? That was impossible. The countryside was swarming with creatures bigger than that, their nightly runs cutting across the Garden, their bioparms programmed to register, yet not sound an alarm. The sensors had to be jiggered.

  “Hill Top.”

  “Yes.”

  “Notify the Sawrey dirty-harrys. We have a trespasser. Get me a kill clearance.”

  A high-baud squirt down the optics and a squirt back.

  “Secured.”

  Not bothering to dress, McGregor reached down from its wallrack a bell-mouthed gun with a magazine shaped like an old-fashioned film canister, its alloy stock featuring oval cutouts as a weightsaving measure.

  Downstairs, McGregor roused a gently snoring Mr. Tod. (Many splices, their vocal apparatus modified in the sim-womb for speech, suffered from attendant respiratory problems.)

  “Get your slagging withers out of bed. We’ve got a fox in the henhouse.”

  “A fox?”

  “Don’t take me so fucking literally, you stupid trans. Now move it or lose it.”

  Leaving Mr. Tod to catch up, McGregor raced swiftly and silently toward the barn.

  The door was slightly ajar, its rim edged with light.

  McGregor kicked it off its hinges.

  His extra wetware instantly processed the scene revealed to him, as if it were a freeze-frame.

  Several splices crushed beneath the falling door. All the rest clumped in a loose knot around two rabbits. A third rabbit lying on the floor.

  The renegade Peter!

  Lone blot on McGregor’s record …

  The scene went realtime.

  The bad rabbit darted a paw under its coat. McGregor recognized a Jumpstart shoulder harness. The pistol leaped out into the rabbit’s paw.

  But McGregor had already fired.

  A small packet burst against Peter’s chest.

  Faster than even McGregor’s eye could follow, Peter was wrapped from head to toe in Ivax netting, his pistol trapped against his body. He teetered for a moment, then toppled.

  McGregor walked confidently up to the trameled rabbit, the stunned splices shakily parting for him.

  “Fucking Crusader Rabbit … What’ll you do now?”

  Not waiting for Peter’s answer, heedless of the soreness of his own door-bruised limb, McGregor buried his foot in the var’s stomach.

  6. The Tale of Mr. Tod

  Mr. Tod, grunting on his foxy-smelling doss-pad on the first level of Hill Top Farm, was dreaming.

  He was free, free to course the hills and valleys of the immemorial land in his ancestral unmodified form. ’Cross brook and meadow he ranged, following the scents of friend and foe, mate and prey. The sun, the wind, the deep den in winter, these were all he required to be happy. His life was a fulfilling completeness in itself.

  In this dream, Mr. Tod had a nightmare.

  Humans caught him and tied him to a rack. They bent and twisted his limbs until he yelped with searing pain. When he finally resembled his tormentors, they released him and gave him duties. To watch similarly tortured creatures, guard and chivy them. In return, he was “rewarded”: a suit of useless clothes, cloying food, the occasional hurried mating with an imported vixen delivered by the Hedonics Plus van, synthetic chases of bloodless quarry through the thickets of his own brain.…

  In this nightmare, the days passed like an eternal winter. He struggled to return to his real life. With a vast effort he awoke —

  Then awoke once more, back into the nightmare.

  Carrying a gun, McGregor was shaking him roughly. Was it morning already? He could hear the tourists laughing at his antics. “Who’s been eating from my pie-dish? Who’s been using my best tablecloth? It must be that odious Tommy Brock. And look, he’s sleeping in my bed! I’ll teach him—”

  But no, it was not even dawn yet. McGregor was saying something about a fox. He was the only fox here, wasn’t he? Why couldn’t the man let him sleep? He was supposed to be allowed to sleep at night. At the training kennel the teachers had promised him an easy life. They had claimed he would have a kind master. But McGregor was not kind, far from it. He hurt splices, seemed to enjoy it. And he forced Mr. Tod to aid him. Mr. Tod worried about this. He did not want to hurt anyone unnecessarily. You killed only to eat, in order to survive. Hurting was not sport. Sport was frisking and mating—Yet what could he do? McGregor had to be obeyed.…

  Now the man was suddenly gone. Mr. Tod forced himself to get up. He took his coat down from a peg and donned it. “You must not appear out of costume in public.…” Then he went outside.

  The barn door was missing, light spilling out. This was not normal. Mr. Tod snapped alert. Danger thrummed in the very air, as when the baying of a pack of hounds was heard.

  Cautiously, Mr. Tod poked his pointy nose around the empty doorframe.

  McGregor stood above a rabbit in a net. The rabbit was gasping for breath and retching.

  As Mr. Tod watched, the splice named Flopsy made a move toward McGregor, who swiveled his gun toward her.

  “You too?” said the man.

  Flopsy halted. “You may stop us today, but you won’t hold us forever. The end of your rule is coming. There is a place where splices live free—”

  Mr. Tod listened unbelievingly. Not privy to the whispered nightly rumors exchanged among the barn-dwellers, he had never heard of such a thing. Could it be true? There was the presence of the bound rabbit to consider. Wait, was he the old Peter?

  McGregor silenced Flopsy with a backhand across her muzzle, rocking her on her big feet.

  “Anyone else have something to say?” he demanded.

  The splices all looked at the floor. McGregor laid down his gun. One of Peter’s ears, the left, protruded from the net. McGregor grabbed it and effortlessly lifted Peter up to his feet.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time for this—”

  Peter had managed to regain his breath. Mustering all his strength, he spat now into McGregor’s face.

  “Eat your own pellets, proke!”

  McGregor howled and closed his hands on Peter’s neck.

  Something snapped in Mr. Tod.

  He launched himself across the distance separating him from the struggle.

  The impact of Mr. Tod on the man shattered his chokehold and knocked him to the floor.

  Mr. Tod scrambled atop McGregor.

  “What—” was all McGregor had time to utter.

  Then Mr. Tod fastened his teeth in McGregor’s reinforced throat.

  Roaring, McGregor reflexively began to throttle the fox.

  Mr. Tod did not let go. Though all grew black, though the sound of some celestial hunter’s horn filled his ears, his powerful jaws remained fastened tightly until he was dead.

  But by then, so was McGregor.

  7. Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes

  Mrs. Tiggywinkle freed Peter with her pinking shears. He surprised himself by being able to stand on his own.

  His throat felt like he had smoked a pack of fags in five minutes. His left ear throbbed. When he had fallen, his pistol had gouged him. Yet he had never felt better.

  Regarding the pair of corpses at his feet, Peter sensed words swelling up unbidden in him.

  “In the end, Tod was no quisling, but a true splice. And if man has stripped us of our birthright, he has also showed us the commonality of our lot. Fox saves rabbit, cat helps mouse, the lion lies down with the lamb. Tod’s death was not the first, nor will it be the last. But without our further actions, it could be in vain. Come, we must flee.”

  Outside, as the splices gathered ’round him, looking nervously at the world that awaited them, Peter removed a letterbomb from his coat.

  He threw the capsule at the barn.

  Shattering and
splattering the wall, the intelligent silicrobe paint formed a departing message from the CLF.

  We have a little garden,

  A garden of our own,

  And every day we water there

  The seeds that we have sown.

  BRAIN WARS

  SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE

  SYSOI-4591P

  RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE

  DATE/HOUR: 070465: 070465/1275

  TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK

  Dear Host Mother,

  The invasion is over, and I’m fine. Safe as a blastula in a bioreactor, in fact, here inside our risk bubble.

  Which is more than I can say for the enemy, Mom. We pretty much turned them into sodai gomi in less time than it takes to flip a SQUID.

  I’m really sorry I can’t raster you face-to-face or virt you in Candyland and see you smile at the good news. I can almost picture you nictitating that way you do when you’re happy. But for reasons of security, us zygotes (that’s just a friendly term the officers have for noncoms) don’t have full access to the metamedium. We’ve been stripped of all our telltags and poqetpals, most of us for the first time in our lives. I feel plumb naked! We’re limited to this retro-jethro Teleport bonovox line, I guess so no live Si-viruses or GaAs-worms can slip in or out. And in fact, all these sending units have a TL1 AI chip in them that will automatically erase any critical information from the transmission. Like for instance, if I were to try to tell you that we’re stationed just north of CENSORED, or that our KIA’s amounted to CENSORED, the machine would simply blip that part right out.

  Works out just as well as the metamedium, I guess, what with CENSORED time-zones between us and all.

  Anyway, the important thing is that our mission seems to be a big success. Once again, the IMF has managed to intervene just in time to stop a potential catastrophe.

  I’ll tell you more in a while. But right now my main proxy, Penguin, is calling me. Seems we have to use the simorg colony to evolve some new expert modules they need by yesterday!

  Your loving guest-son,

  CENSORED

  SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE

  SYS01-4591P

  RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE

  DATE/HOUR: 070465/1610

  TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK

  Dear Host Mother,

  What a jangle-tangle! The brass-skulls and swellheads stopped by with a crew of noahs from the GEF wanting to evaluate the oceanic/atmospheric contamination produced by this latest Short War, and Penguin and I were kept busy bending molecules during what should have been our downtime. (At least one of the noahs, a Xuly Beth Vollbracht, was nice enough to bring along a dose of recreational tropes to share with us.) Anyhow, they finally finished with us, and since Penguin wanted to go offline for a while, I thought I’d pick up my transmission to you where I left off.

  Now, I know you and I have had our disagreements about the IMF’s policies. Why, sometimes you actually sounded like a rifkin or greenpeacer! I can remember you saying, “I never got to vote for the World Bank board.” But we all got to vote for the politicians who voted for them, whether we hailed from a big polypax like the NU or the EC, or a little one like our own McMurdo, so we can’t really blame anyone else when the IMF does something we don’t particularly like. I’m thinking of the mess they made in what used to be Yongbyon—the “Pyongyang Gang Bang” I remember you called it—and the way they handled (or mishandled) those renegade cricks and transgenics hiding out in the Azores. The Atlantic will recover faster from that one than the IMF’s reputation will!

  But those incidents took place before I joined, which you’ll recall was right after the big command shakeup. My own unit was purged of all its officers, and Oberjefe Ozal received a field promotion, which he still holds. I think you’d like Ozal, he’s a smart, goodlooking probe—the NYC gals in our pod all call him a “streetbeat gamete,” which I guess is some kind of compliment—but he’s not conceited. His main philofix is music. He plays his qawwali tabs whenever he has a spare moment—mostly thru earwigs, since no one else really enjoys the holy Slammer wailing.

  Anyhow, I can’t say I feel any personal responsibility for any of the IMF’s previous goo-screwing cockups (pardon the language), and nothing I’ve taken part in since I signed up has led me to regret my decision.

  I’ve got to cut this short now, since one of my proxies is waiting to use the ’vox unit. I’ll be right back.

  Your loving guest-son,

  CENSORED

  SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE

  SYS01-4501P

  RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE

  DATE/HOUR: 070465/1918

  TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK

  Dear Host Mother,

  Sorry about the delay. My buddy got an incoming ’vox right after he sent his. It was a “Dear Juan,” wishing him a nasty hasta luego. Seems his target had joined the antiwar movement since he shipped out and now wants nothing to do with “bloody imperialist murderers” like us. It took some major tropes and a lot of talk to calm him down.

  I just can’t understand these protestors, Mom. It must be that they don’t know what’s really going on here. If they did, they’d realize we’re just doing what has to be done.

  I’m real proud of this operation, my first major action. We made the enemy “cry onco!” faster than ribozymes. I wish I could tell you all about it, since I understand the metamedium coverage was somewhat limited. I’ll try, and see what the chip lets thru.

  The IMF issued its unconditional surrender ultimatum at 2300 hours on the second of this month. By 2400 hours, when the enemy had still not replied, the operation commenced. First in were the smartskin bombers, scramjets mostly under AI control, but a few being gloved by pilots offshore in MHD subs. These planes released burrowers, antipersonnel midges, thermites, core-borers, glass-masters, virtual ghosts, and CENSORED. The enemy responded with Raid-Plus, bouncing buckyballs, fractal shrubs, moletraps, CENSORED, and kaleidoscopes, but were mucho outclassed. There was never really any contest.

  Hot on the first wave’s heels, the APV’s loaded with transgenic troops moved in for whatever close fighting might arise. The Fourth Wolverines really distinguished themselves, as did the CENSORED. Once I-Cubed reported that things were pretty much under control, approximately CENSORED of us fifty-oners went in, the only humans involved in the whole shootup.

  When the enemy’s AI’s committed silicide, we knew the latest Short War was history.

  Mom, I’ll tell you now that what we found once we occupied the enemy’s territory—in confirmation of the rumors that prompted the assault—is enough to make your cells metastasize. These guys had developed a whole armory of aerosol-borne neurotropic weapons which they planned to use shortly on their immediate neighbors, and afterwards on whoever got in their way. Of course this is entirely against the Minsk Conventions, which they are a signatory to, and these gnomic jokers had to be stopped.

  I don’t imagine the next few days will see much excitement. We’re just riding herd on the civilian populace while the experts from the essays, peltsies, beeves, and gembaitches—Textron, Rhone-Daewoo, Toyobo, Ciba-Kobe, EMBRAPA—dismantle the armament autofacs.

  I’ve got some I&I leave coming up after this is over and expect to spend some of it with you and Dad and Mom2 and Dad2 and Mom3.

  Crank those photoharvesters up—I’m used to the tropics now!

  Your loving guest-son,

  CENSORED

  SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE

  SYS01-4591P

  RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE

  DATE/HOUR: 070565/0325

  TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK

  Dear Host Mother,

  We just stepped down from Fever Alert Status.

  It appears that some autonomous remnant of the enemy is still functioning.

  Most of us were sleeping when our earwigs gave the alarm. I never thought the words “perimeter breach!” could sound so chilling. We all scrambled into our Affymax millipore gear, praying that we hadn’t catalyzed anything con
trametabolic. Almost before we could grab our high-kinetics and lyzers, the “all clear” came thru. The tinmen and transgenics had neutralized the invaders, who amounted only to a handful of Gorilla guerrillas. Examination of the corpses revealed nothing out of the ordinary—except for one thing. The vars had CENSORED incorporated into their bodies, right next to their CENSORED. These add-ons were empty, indicating they might have had time to spray something before being smoked.

  That something, they tell us, could be time-delayed in its effects.

  We’re all just sitting around now on our hands while the mccoys and herriots go over us with their cell-sniffers and hormone hounds, squeezing our virtual platelets for anything nonsomatic. So I thought I’d ’vox you this letter.

  Don’t worry.

  Your loving guest-son,

  CENSORED

  SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE

  SYS01-4591P

  RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE

  DATE/HOUR: 070565/0800

  TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK

  Dear,

  Can’t find to refer to. Seem to have disappeared from. Made bad inside. Very bad. Hard to use common. Looks strange near and far. Because of made bad up inside. Hopeful to fix. Examine, then create. Reassurring.

  But—partly running around crazy. Dangerous. Watch, shoot—how? Forget how to use without.

  Sit still. Holding together, lovely and crying. Please don’t cry. Can’t convey. Too frustrating to go on.

  Will ’vox soon.

  Don’t worry.

  Your loving,

  CENSORED

  SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE

  SYS01-4591P

  RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE

  DATE/HOUR: 070565/1200

  TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK

  Dear Host Mother,

  Whew! Am I glad the past four hours are over!

  My last transmission probably didn’t make a whole lot of sense to you. That was because I couldn’t use any nouns! You see, everyone in the pod was experiencing a selective aphasia, kind of a language blind spot. A whole category of language had been effectively wiped from our cortexes. Or so the blood-dusters tell us.