Germline: The Subterrene War: Book 1

by T. C. McCarthy

  “Yeah. In a way.”

  “To hell with that, mate. You’re just crazy. You know how I know?”

  I shook my head. “How?”

  “Because there are heaps better ways to grow up, mate. Heaps.”

  There wasn’t anything to say, because he was right. Sophie and I have two kids already, and if there’s any way to do it, my plan is to have them grow up the easy way. If I can do that, maybe they’ll never meet any cockroaches.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book wouldn’t have been possible without the support of my wife, Carolyn, and the understanding of my children, Liam, Lily, and Reece. Thanks also to my mom and my sister. Special appreciation goes to Alberto Patiño Douce (who taught me to think), Gena Harper (who taught me to believe), and John Swegle (who taught me the value of money). Others were equally instrumental in getting Germline out: Nick Mamatas, for critiquing the original novelette; Lou Anders, for introducing me to so many in the genre; DongWon Song, my editor, for working with an unknown; and my agent, Alex Field, for believing in Germline from the start. Last I’d like to thank Edmond Chang, who deserves special recognition because he taught me how to write; for that there are no adequate words of thanks.

  For George Plimpton, and Kevin, and Scott.

  extras

  meet the author

  T. C. MCCARTHY earned a BA from the University of Virginia and a PhD from the University of Georgia before embarking on a career that gave him a unique perspective as a science fiction author. From his time as a patent examiner in complex biotechnology, to his tenure with the Central Intelligence Agency, T.C. has studied and analyzed foreign militaries and weapons systems. T.C. was at the CIA during the September 11 terrorist attacks and was still there when US forces invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, allowing him to experience warfare from the perspective of an analyst. Find out more about the author at www.tcmccarthy.com.

  interview

  If you could go back and give advice to the sixteen-year-old T. C. McCarthy, what would it be?

  You’ll be bald by thirty-six, so enjoy having hair now.

  Give a brief arc of your writing career; how’d you get started?

  Look, I’m no different than any other writer; I’ve always written. But what’s more important is that I’ve always read. Magazines, comic books, graffiti, and books—you name it and I’ve read it. Childhood meant California—Bay Area—and our mom had this thing about no television, so she threw it away, which meant we could either go home with a latchkey or trip it to the library (riding a bike), where we’d read for a while, then throw water balloons at cars. There was a lot of running from neighborhood bullies too, and, after that, more reading. So by the time I picked up a pen (we didn’t have computers in the ’70s and early ’80s, and forget about having access to a typewriter), I’d already gotten that sense of story. Constant reading branded it into my brain. And story-sense provided enough juice to keep me going through the early stages, when writing was about fumbling with words more than working with them, but to be honest, the story-sense was a curse at first. I knew the kinds of stories I wanted to write. But that’s not the same thing as being able to put the words on paper, and it took twenty-five years of practice before I wrote anything worth reading, let alone anything someone would buy.

  What’s the best advice you’ve been given when it comes to writing?

  To not become a writer. George Plimpton gave the commencement address at my high school, so what did I do? I walked right up to the guy and said, Mr.-Plimpton-I’d-really-like-to-be-a-writer-can-you-give-me-any-advice? Like he’d never been asked that before. Well, George gets this look on his face, like he needs to find the can, and then takes a deep breath before shaking his head. And that voice; you know the one: pompous and arrogant but with the chops to back it up, so you just let it steamroll. “Don’t do it,” said George. “There are far too many of us in the world already and you’d be better off going into banking, or being a doctor or lawyer.” What in hell did you say to something like that?

  Except…

  Plimpton was right. UVA’s creative writing program denied me entry (I submitted science fiction as a writing sample, which apparently was a big no-no), so the dean gave me permission to drop out and surf Australia; I gave up on the whole English major/MFA thing. Still, here’s the thing: I wrote. Never stopped. By then someone had invented a thing called a PC, then the laptop, which made writing easy, and my eventual path as a PhD student and scientist primed me with all kinds of material that I never would have gotten had I concentrated on being “a writer” from the first day of college. Here’s to you, Plimpton.

  You’ve written short stories for literary, horror, and science fiction venues. What gives? Can’t you just pick one? Which do you like best when it comes to short stories?

  First let me caveat my answer: I have a lot to learn. There are plenty of writers out there who can define what literary fiction is, and I’ve read the blog wars over the Academy snubbing genre writers, etc., but these discussions are beyond me. So right now, none of that stuff matters; I write and read. Sometimes I feel a mainstream/literary story in my gut, and it just comes out, and I’ve had success with those, having published in Per Contra and Story Quarterly. I’ve only written two literary shorts, so that’s a one thousand batting average! In fact, I wrote my first literary story because my SF had been rejected so often from pro venues that I was furious and decided screw it—time to write something else. In contrast to the SF venues, a professional-rate online magazine bought that short story within a month of my submitting it. What the hell does that mean?

  And no, I can’t just pick one genre and don’t have a favorite—anything goes.

  Who is your favorite author?

  Here are my favorites by country:

  USA: Ray Bradbury, Michael Herr, Joe Haldeman

  UK: Hector H. Munro, George Orwell, John Christopher

  France: Guy Sajer

  Russia: Artyom Borovik

  Kazakhstan: Kanatzhan Alibekov

  Israel: Ron Lesham

  You have a day job and a family; when do you write?

  On my days off, but usually between eight and eleven p.m. and four and seven a.m. I get very little sleep. Maybe that’s why so many of my stories and books tend to be dark.

  The protagonist in Germline is an interesting character with some major flaws; how did you choose that guy, and what went into fleshing out Oscar Wendell?

  I’ll never reveal everything about that process; it was personal. But Oscar is like a lot of people I’ve known growing up, especially in a world where children are exposed to drugs at an early age. For guys like Oscar it’s too great a temptation. I mean, of course people will take or drink “stuff” that makes them forget that they’re embarrassed to dance in public, makes them uninhibited when it comes to talking to the opposite sex, and makes them, essentially, fearless. These, however, are lies. In the case of Oscar, addiction prevents him from learning fundamental principles “normal” people take for granted, like the fact that using war as a springboard to fame is insane. Oscar, however, is lucky. I’ve known plenty of people who go down a similar path and don’t make it back alive or, if they do, are just damaged goods. I wanted a character that overcomes all that; in a way, Germline is a coming-of-age story (albeit an unusual one).

  What book is in front of you right now?

  Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, by David Galula. I have to stay sharp, you know?

  introducing

  If you enjoyed GERMLINE,

  look out for

  EXOGENE

  The Subterrene War: Book 2

  by T. C. McCARTHY

  Spoiling

  And you will come upon a city cursed, and everything that festers in its midst will be as a disease; nothing will be worthy of pity, not insects, animals, or even men.

  MODERN COMBAT MANUAL

  JOSHUA 6:17

  Live forever. The thought lingered like an annoying dog to which I h
ad handed a few scraps.

  I felt Megan’s fingers against my skin and smelled the paste—breathed the fumes gratefully, for it reminded me that I wouldn’t have to wear my helmet. Soon, but not now. The lessons taught this, described the first symptom of spoiling: when the helmet no longer felt safe, a sign of claustrophobia. As my troop train rumbled northward, I couldn’t tell if I shook from eagerness or from the railcar’s jolting, and gave up trying to distinguish between the two possibilities. It was not an either-or day; it was a day of simultaneity.

  Deliver me from myself, I prayed, and help me to accept tomorrow’s end.

  Almost a hundred of my sisters filled the railcar, in a train consisting of three hundred carriages, each one packed with the same cargo. My newer sisters—replacements with childlike faces—were of lesser importance. Megan counted for everything. She smiled as she stroked my forehead, which made me so drowsy that my eyes flickered shut with a memory, the image of an atelier, of a technician brushing fingers across my cheek as he cooed from outside the tank. I liked those memories. They weren’t like the ones acquired more recently, and once upon a time everything had been that way. Sterile. Days in the atelier had been clean and warm—not like this.

  “Everything was so white then,” I said, “like a lily.”

  Megan nodded and kissed me. “It was closer to perfect, not a hint of filth. Do not be angry today, Catherine. It’s counterproductive. Kill with detachment, with the greater plan.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned forward so Megan could work more easily, and so she wouldn’t see my smile while smearing paste on my scalp, the thin layer of green thermal block that would dry into a latex-like coating, blocking my heat. The replacements all stared at us.

  “Can you tell us what to expect in Uchkuduk?” one of them asked. “It’s my first time—the first time for most of us. They mustered us a month ago from the Winchester atelier, near West Virginia. How should we prepare?”

  “It’s simple,” I said. “There’s one thing they don’t teach in the atelier: Bleeznyetzi.”

  Several of them leaned closer.

  “Bleeznyetzi?”

  I nodded. “It’s Russian for ‘twins.’ ”

  “You are an older version,” one said. “We speak multiple languages, including Russian and Kazakh, and we know the word.”

  “Then you know what our forces call us—the humans.”

  “No. What?”

  The train squealed around a sudden bend, pushing me further against the wall. I braced a boot against Megan, who had just fallen asleep, to keep her from slumping over.

  “Bitches and sluts. The tanks taught English too, right?”

  They left me alone after that. It was no surprise—we all learned the same lesson: “Watch out for defeatists, the ones near the end of their terms. Defeatism festers in those who approach the age. Ignore their voices. Learn from their actions but do not listen to their words. When you and your sisters reach eighteen, a spoiling sets in, so pray for deliverance from defeatism and you will be discharged. Honorably. Only then will you ascend to be seated at His right hand.” The replacements wouldn’t associate themselves with me for fear that I would rub off on them, the spoiling a contagion, and for some reason it made me feel warm to think I had that kind of power.

  “You’re incorrigible,” I whispered to Megan. “It is not your turn for rest.” But she didn’t hear, and exhaustion showed on her face, in thin lines that I hadn’t noticed before, while she slept. “I’ll tell you a secret: hatred is the only thing keeping me from spoiling, the only thing I have left, the only thing I do well.”

  The armored personnel carrier’s compartment felt like a steam bath. Heat acted as a catalyst, lowering the amount of energy it took for the phantom dead to invade my mind, and I focused on my hands, thinking that concentration would keep the hallucination at bay. It was no use. The APC engine roared like a call from the past, and Megan melted away to be replaced by the dusty outskirts of Pavlodar, a bird jabbering overhead as we jumped off from the river. Five Kazakhs stood in an alley. They looked at me as if I was an anomaly, a dripping fish that had just stood up on two legs to walk from the Irtysh, and they failed to recognize the danger. Our girl named Majda moved first. She sprayed the women—who began to scream—with fléchettes, her stream of needles cutting some of them in half as she laughed. Majda wouldn’t laugh for much longer. A rocket went through her, leaving only a pair of twitching legs…

  Megan was shouting at me when the vision evaporated.

  “Catherine!”

  The APC compartment reappeared. We sat encased in a tiny ceramic cubicle, strapped into our seats and struggling to breathe alcohol-contaminated air as the vehicle idled.

  “You’re spoiling,” she said. “You were laughing.”

  I nodded and tongued another tranq tab—my third in the last hour.

  “It’s an insanity,” Megan continued. “I worry. The spoiling seems to be worse in you than in any other, and someone will report it. One of the new girls.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Soon we will kill again and then it will be as if nothing was ever wrong, as if destruction was a meal, maybe toast and honey.”

  The turbine for the plasma cannon buzzed throughout the vehicle, vibrating the twenty cubicles like ours along each side and the three large ones down the vehicle’s spine. We had two ways out: the normal way, a tiny hatch in the floor, where we would come out underneath and roll from between the APC’s huge wheels; and an escape hatch in the roof, where we could pop out in an emergency. It wouldn’t be long before everything stopped and time would dilate with excitement, with the freedom of movement and a sudden breakout into the open, where one could find targets among men.

  The turbines went quiet and I saw a tear on Megan’s cheek.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I explained, “not because I don’t care about you. I do. It doesn’t matter because we’re dead anyway tomorrow. And I don’t want to die.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I don’t want to be discharged.”

  “You speak like them, like the non-bred.”

  I shook my head, ignoring the insult, and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like to live past the age? Maybe the spoiling goes away. Fades. I have more killing to do, and they will rob me of it at eighteen.”

  Megan shook her head. She turned and I saw from the movement of her neck that she had begun sobbing, which made me feel even worse, because my actions ruined the moment. This was to have been a sacred time. It was said that in quiet seconds during battle, when the firing paused, as it sometimes did without explanation, one heard His voice in the wind or in the silence of the suit, His hand on your heart to let you know that you were a sacred thing among the corrupt. So the time before an engagement was to be used for reflection, to prepare for glory in an hour of meditation that climaxed with a flash of anticipation, of wanting to prove one’s worthiness. But words ruined everything.

  There were plans and strategies, mapped out in advance by human generals and run through computers, semi-aware, able to calculate just how far we could go before our systems reached their limit. It was a ritual beyond us—the way our leaders communicated with God and channeled His will. Nobody gave us the details. For the past two years, neither Megan nor I had known why the war existed, except what we had caught in passing during interactions with men, with human forces, the non-bred. But those were glimpses. They weren’t enough to answer all the questions, and soon we stopped asking, because it was enough to know that we fought Russian men, and we prayed that God would make the war last forever. A feeling of satisfaction filled me as I thought about it, as if knowing that God was a part of the plan was enough, something that made us invincible because He trusted us to cleanse this part of the world, to allow a lily like Megan to exercise her will.

  We would move out soon. Far below us, the advance shock wave of our sisters was already attacking, underground, pushing into Russian tunnel positions
and killing as many as possible before we followed with the main force—a mixed army of humans and my sisters, exposed aboveground for the greater glory. Our attack would make Megan feel better, I was certain. Waiting never helped, but war?

  War made us feel fifteen again.

  They played it over the speakers when we were born at fifteen-equivalent—the hymn, a prayer known only by us, our first lesson, a call to the faithful:

  This is my Maxwell. It was invented over a century before I was born but this one is new, this one is mine. The barrel of my Maxwell consists of an alloy tube, encased by band after band of superconducting magnets. I am shielded from the flux by ceramic and alloy barrel wraps, which join to the fuel cell, the fuel cell to the stock. My Maxwell carbine has no kick; my carbine has a flinch. It is my friend, my mother. My carbine propels its children, the fléchettes, down its length, rapidly accelerating them to speeds ranging from subsonic to hypersonic. It depends on what I choose.

  My carbine is an instrument of God. I am an instrument of God. Unlike ancient firearms, the fléchettes have no integral chemical propellant and are therefore tiny, allowing me to fill a shoulder hopper with almost ten thousand at a time. Ten thousand chances to kill. My fléchettes are messengers of God. My fléchettes are killers. The material and shape of my killers make them superior armor penetrators. But my killers are not perfect. I am not perfect. My killers are too small to work alone and must function as a family. But I shall not worry. My Maxwell will fire fifty fléchettes per second, and fifty is a family. With my Maxwell I can liberate a man of his head or limbs. With my Maxwell I will kill until there is nothing left alive.