“They’ve been keeping us busy,” X said. “We’ve had to trade for food with them. They withhold Picasso’s Blue from the Mothers, which makes life pretty hard.”
“Did they tell you how they make it?”
“Yes.” X’s grim expression softened suddenly. “They told us you’re a lousy witch doctor, too. I have to admit to admiring them. They don’t have a gram of shame. They take pieces of First and then try to sell them back to us in exchange for whatever portable stuff we’ve got.”
Kalypso smiled. “They’ll take you for all you’re worth.”
“There was a fight. Between Jarold and this Dead woman called Charl. I thought Jarold was going to be killed. But they left him alone. They took Jarold’s boat.” Sharia shuddered. “They’re so strange and vicious. I’m afraid of them.”
“Have they been inside Oxygen 2?”
Sharia looked at her as if she was mad.
“Of course not! They’ve been horrible to us, Kalypso. They kidnapped Lila—you know, cute little Lila, one of the youngest—
“Yeah, they like us young and cute,” Kalypso said. “Tastier that way.”
X turned and knotted his eyebrows at her.
“Well, they took her and it wasn’t easy getting her back. There were about five or six Grunts plus Ahmed and Grendal and Tomimasa, and they almost didn’t succeed.”
“Is there one called Neko?”
“Dunno. Look, we’re just about here. Do you think you’ll be able to walk, or should we bring a sling or something?”
But Kalypso was staring at a boat she recognized, cruising just beyond the baffle.
“Was that Malik? And Genn? What are they doing with Teres?”
“Them.” Sharia slitted her eyes. “They can’t be trusted anymore. The Dead stole them with Picasso’s Blue. They’ve lured that whole cluster away from Oxygen 2. They claim they can teach you to live in the Wild.”
“That’s true,” Kalypso said absently. “But—” she was going to say something like, why weren’t the clusters simply talking to the Dead? but Sharia cut* her off.
“Don’t think about it, Kalypso. It’s not healthy for you.”
“They’re sirens,” X chimed in with a leer. “Luring men to their deaths.”
“Oh, shut up. The Dead can’t help being ugly. Anyway, so far we’ve lost only the one cluster. Conditions at Oxygen 2 are bad, but not bad enough to drive people into the Wild. What’s disturbing is that those who have gone are helping to take Ganesh apart. I can’t understand how they could be so faithless.”
Sharia would always be loyal to the Mothers. Her fundamental appreciation for order would prevail no matter what.
“Give me your paw, Kalypso,” X said. “Let me show you into my parlor.”
The interior of the factory was largely given over to storage of the chemicals it produced: oxygen, nitrogen, and small quantities of various polymers. Oxygen 2 did not possess the refrigeration facilities that First did, even though its location was cooler: therefore, no gases could be stored as liquids. Only two or three minor nodes of Ganesh regulated the entire factory, dependent on radio link to the rest of the AI. There was no luma. There were no windows, no Dreamtanks, no amenities worth mentioning. The small percentage of the interior devoted to human occupancy was not divided into cells. It consisted of the open space within the base of the gutted engine tube threaded throughout by dozens of pipes and tubes like a giant cat’s cradle. It was here that the refugees had been obliged to set up housekeeping. They had wasted no time in making a ghetto of the place.
Tents had been assembled high up in the piping; empty surface suits hung like scarecrows from twists in the tubes; barrels of water stood at intervals, surrounded by heaps of soiled clothing and dishes. Crates had been piled to create haphazard walls, and empty oxygen tanks turned on end made seats and tables. There were people everywhere. The air stank richly, and the noise was reminiscent of a seagull colony at hatching time.
To Kalypso, it was the pleasure dome of Kublai Khan.
During her initial hours there, she was aware of the activity around her only peripherally. The sense of crisis had not relaxed since she’d left First, only now everyone was crammed into the same space instead of existing in separate, Ganesh-linked sections. The effect was chaotic and probably would have upset her in the old days; now it was welcome. She didn’t even notice what it was everyone was running around doing; it was unlikely, she thought, to matter what they did.
Sharia took her to Van, the medical specialist from Nocturne. Kalypso lay on a crate while he made an assessment of her condition. Sharia brought out Marcsson’s studies of Kalypso’s missing skin and offered them for inspection.
Van took out a lightstick and examined her closely for long, silent minutes. He looked at each of the damaged areas in turn without saying anything, his expression emotionless and utterly involved at once.
“There are T’nani cultures. Looking at your blood-work, I’d say you had been fighting these things off for some time. The damage to you is negligible, but there’s no doubt that your tissue is no longer normal. These new layers that look like skin aren’t skin at all. The epidermal cells are non-nuclear and they’re assembled in matrixes.”
“Matrixes? You mean like luma.”
“Yeah, that’s that I mean. There are tiny subs in there. No magnetosomes, but definitely an array of phenotypes. Some of these are so small and mobile they may have migrated to other parts of the body. They may be dormant. Without Ganesh, I can’t tell you much, except to say that your body is no longer reacting as if threatened. What’s interesting is the cells themselves. I’m going to take samples so I can look at the genetic material, but morphologically they look like a hybrid of human epidermal cells and, if memory serves, some member of the subclass m. gemino. It’s not clear to me how the macro-structure is regulated.”
“Let me see.” Liet pushed past the others and sat shoulder to shoulder with Van, peering intently at Kalypso’s left thigh. “Yes! To be more specific, it looks like gemino 3 or 7. Those subs are exclusive to RV-11. Marcsson must have introduced them deliberately. We can’t culture these in the Works because we can’t figure out how they react at high temperatures. . . . you say he used Sieng’s tissues as a source for these cultures, Kalypso?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve had a quick look at Sieng. I’d like to compare her cells with yours.” Liet turned her attention to Kalypso’s skin samples preserved in gel.
Van said, “That’s easy. We’ll get a sample and work this up. You can go, Kalypso.”
“That’s it? I can go?”
Van smiled an apology: “Look. I don’t think this thing’s going to kill you. However, it doesn’t look like you’re going to kill it, either.”
“Will I become like them? Like the Dead?”
His look was cautious. “In what sense?”
“Will I make . . . things?”
“Picasso’s Blue, you mean? Not unless the agents used to develop your skin are the same as those that infected the Dead.”
“We know that they’re not,” Liet said. “Kalypso has several different indigent systems operating. The ones on her back are not the same as the ones on her legs, for example.”
“I was an experiment.” She knew her tone sounded clipped.
“Your skin might be used as a factory for other agents,” Liet said.
Van was studying Kalypso’s face closely. “Time will tell,” he said. “You shouldn’t concern yourself with any of that now.”
Sharia murmured something in the medic’s ear, and Van turned and conferred quietly with her. Kalypso heard Marcsson’s name and tensed.
“He’s alive?” she said. Her voice shook. “Where is he.”
“He’s not here,” Sharia said too quickly, and Kalypso knew she was lying. But she accepted Sharia’s words, her reassuring hands. “Kalypso, you look weak. Do you want something to eat?”
She knew she was being coddled and didn’t care. She n
odded. Van went off to look at Sieng’s body and Sharia went to fetch food, but Kalypso stayed where she was. Liet was lost in study of the skin samples, ripping her fingernails off one by one until she’d damaged the cuticles; then she would idly put a bleeding finger into her mouth and suck it. One foot tapped with no real rhythm and the muscles in her jaw could be seen working.
It was a familiar sight. Liet was thinking, and as trying as it was to observe, it might lead to some good. So Kalypso waited, and ate what Sharia and X brought. And waited longer.
“OK. Uh, Kalypso.” Finally Liet looked up and brushed loose strands of hair away from her eyes, which darted without finding focus. She fumbled with her words. “Your skin. Sieng. For twenty years her body has been an interface. The Dead, they think of her only as a factory for the sub they use to trigger the Picasso’s Blue viroid in their skin. Just like we think of the System as a factory for oxygen. But Sieng’s more than that now. The infectious agents that killed her have been battling over her tissues for years. She was submerged in luma all that time — god, I wish we had the luma fluid because it would be a record of every interaction, we could see the history like a movie but it’s no use crying over spilled milk I guess— anyway when she was submerged a whole micro-System grew in her. Evolved. And her body became a translator between human biochemistry and the System. We’re seeing forms in her that don’t exist anywhere else.”
“Human biochemistry?” Sharia sounded incredulous. “Sieng’s dead. What kind of human metabolism can be happening?”
“She might not be metabolizing, but structurally, her body’s being transformed. Her DNA’s being reconstructed, broken down and made into something else, something sustainable. Sieng may be dead, but she’s still running against the grain of entropy. Anyway, Kalypso’s not dead and that’s what counts. The cells that were grown in Sieng also attacked Kalypso, but they were repelled. Why? Probably because they were more comprehensible to Kalypso’s immune system than the original indigenous subs were comprehensible to Sieng’s body. Suggesting that a kind of path is being made between us and . . . and . . . well, and them.”
“Them?” X could be seen restraining himself from making a wisecrack.
“The only way to find out is to do more studies.”
“I don’t want to be eaten,” Kalypso protested. “Will it affect my mind? Will I become like Azamat? Is this why he’s crazy?”
Liet looked startled.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, we’re talking about skin so far, not brain tissue.”
“That’s what he said. It’s only skin. I’m so big I’ll never feel it.”
“You? Big?” X chortled.
“I’m not sure he was talking about me, though. He never looked straight at me.”
Liet’s eyes had gone fuzzy. “How do you spell epidermis?” she asked.
Someone told her. She put on her interface and wrote the word in the air. “Uh, Tehar?”
“Let her be,” X said to the others. “She’s got an idea again. She’ll be no use.”
“Is she talking to Tehar? Liet, are you talking to Tehar?”
Liet lifted the interface and shined a crooked, rather asinine smile on Kalypso.
“No, I can’t seem to reach him. Um, I’m starving. Anybody else wanna eat?”
“Yeah,” X said. “Good idea. Enough of this speculation for now.”
Again she had the distinct sense she was being insulated from reality, and again she did not protest.
Despite the best efforts of her nestmates, the mothers resumed harassing Kalypso within a day. They were convinced Marcsson had told her his secrets. She’d begun to figure out that the current friction between the Grunts and the Mothers had to do with the idea of effecting an assault on First to shut down the reflex points. The Grunts continued to insist that, since the Dead had already started taking First apart, it was better to salvage anything that could be saved of the station. This would improve the chances of survival for the clusters, who were in turn beginning to venture out into the clayfields with tentkits to escape the confines and deprivations of life at Oxygen 2. Furious that the Dead had been allowed to manipulate the Mothers and make off with critical supplies, the Grunts began mustering support for a raid on First.
“They want to shut down the reflex points and try to take control of the Gardens and the Works, which are crucial for our survival. They say they don’t give a fuck about the Earth Archives and I guess they have a point,” Ahmed explained reluctantly to Kalypso. “But the witch doctors won’t leave. Tehar says the station can’t be run manually, anyway. It’s too big and complicated.”
“The Grunts will attack anyway, sooner or later, Sharia said. “It makes sense. Tehar is being noble, but I think he’s berking in there. It’s time to cut our losses and move on.”
The Dead guarded the reflex points and traded pieces of the station back to the infuriated Grunts in exchange for whatever goods they desired from Oxygen 2. They were far outnumbered, but no one had wanted to mess with them because the witch doctor said that if the reflex points went down, all would be lost. Meanwhile, the witch doctors tried to convince the Dead that the only way to protect Earth Archives was to keep Ganesh running.
The Grunts maintained the supply lines and said very little. Grunts never did anything in a hurry, and they were probably weighing their options and waiting for developments from the witch doctors within First. But no one had heard from the witch doctors since Marcsson had been brought back.
They avoided talking about Marcsson in Kalypso’s presence. She understood that he was still in a coma, but interfaced. Liet had been going over his data and sending things to First. Yet Witchdoctor Radio, as Kalypso had come to think of it, remained silent.
When they learned Kalypso was back within their province, the Mothers wasted no time in pumping her for information she found herself reluctant to give. There was no ideological reason for her reticence; she simply felt too weak to speak about the Wild.
“It’s simple,” Naomi declared. “Just give us an account of what has been happening to you. We don’t need you to interpret or theorize. Just the facts.”
Kalypso lowered her eyes halfway and looked aside in distaste.
“Don’t hold out on us, Kalypso,” Lassare said. She looked haggard, if this were possible. “You’ll have the last laugh.”
Kalypso twisted her arms around herself and grasped her shoulder blades in either hand. Her clean skin felt slippery.
Sharia touched her head. “Kalypso?”
“You wouldn’t understand.” Her voice sounded like a man’s. “Couldn’t I just have some music please. I can’t do anything right now.”
“We just need you to talk. Sharia, don’t baby her. She can take it.”
Sharia answered in a very low, calm voice, her fingertips grazing Kalypso’s scalp. “Lassare, in about five seconds I’m going to take Kalypso away and you’ll never see her again. Don’t tell me what she can take. We don’t know what happened to her out there. Look at her body.”
“That’s not like you Sharia,” Kalypso said wonderingly. Again the touch on her head. She closed her eyes.
Lassare said, “Was Marcsson in communication with the other Grunts? What was their plan? When did it start to go wrong?”
Kalypso let out a long sigh. Not this sabotage thing again. “He was doing his research. There was no conspiracy. He wanted to solve the Oxygen Problem and he fucked up. You knew what he was doing. You must have. You authorized him to work in that region. Did you think this wouldn’t happen?”
Sharia said, “Kalypso you don’t have to talk about this.”
“You should have been stronger,” Kalypso said. “You’re addicted to Picasso’s Blue and you’re liars. You’re damn liars, all of you, and you’re weak.”
“Strong isn’t enough,” Lassare said. “I came to that conclusion a long time ago. I am strong; we are all strong who came here. We’re stronger than anything we left behind. And it wasn’t enou
gh. You think we’re weak because of the addiction. But addiction isn’t a weakness. It’s strength. It’s a reaching out—”
“For some lousy hits of Picasso’s Blue you kept the Dead out there for years,” she said in a ragged voice. “All the time I was growing up and you were applying your cluster psychology and Ganesh was imprinting our heads, they were out there. Farming their own bodies. Your colleagues. So you could feel strong when you weren’t strong.”
“What would you have done, Kalypso Deed? Do you want to be unborn? Do you wish we had let you perish as an embryo?”
“They were the ones who could have solved the Oxygen Problem. They had the skills. If anyone could have done it, they could.”
“Sieng had already perished. They were all infected. We didn’t know what we were dealing with. We still don’t.”
“Give me music,” Kalypso said. “I’m not talking without it.”
It was fun giving ultimatums instead of receiving them; it was fun doing this when your life wasn’t at stake. Well, maybe it wasn’t fun. But it was preferable to the conversations she’d had with Marcsson in the Wild.
And it got her what she wanted.
The next morning Ahmed came up behind her and slipped her interface over her.
“Music,” she cried, springing to her feet. “How? How?”
“Tehar got the music node back a while ago. Said it was the easiest way into Ganesh. Something to do with your special pathway into the Dreamer. He’s using it as a channel to Ganesh. Or whatever’s left of Ganesh. I’ve downloaded and vetted it for you, so don’t bother trying to get into the System because you can’t. You’re off-line.”
She kissed him and then pushed him away, wrapping her hands around the face. She knew they were staring at her as she closed her eyes and paced, back and forth in the narrow passage between supply crates. Through a gap in the containers she could just see a sliver of bright water beyond Oxygen 2. All she had to do was lean into the interface, and she could have music again. Every night and every day she’d craved it, and now. She could have it. She stood still.
Direct contact, Azamat said. I’ll never get it.
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