by Patty Jansen
She wanted to ask, but before she did, another man in scrubs came in. He stopped at the door, looking at the screen.
“So, that’s what it looks like.”
“Yes,” Hansen said. “This is a pretty clear case.”
A clear case of what?
And then a man and a woman came in, also in scrubs, also staring at the screen.
“Can someone just tell me what is going on?” Thalia said.
Hansen came to the table, and yanked out the struts. “You thought you could get away with this? You thought we were stupid?”
“Get away with what? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Hansen gestured at the screen, where by now a full picture of almost all her blood vessels had appeared. “You don’t know? Do you think everybody’s veins light up like this? You are still going to pretend that you don’t know that you have nanometrics and that you are a spy? I will say it to your face. You are trying to deceive us. This whole humanitarian mission by the Council Of Four is nothing but an effort to spy on us.”
While he spoke, anger had made Thalia’s cheeks glow. “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
Chapter 9
* * *
ORDERS WERE NOT to be disobeyed.
Fabio went with the three men in the lift to the top of the mountain where a truck waited at the access tube. This was definitely a different vehicle, smaller than the six-seater that had brought him here. It was also much faster, and the men seemed to think that getting back to the main base was some sort of off-road rally. They didn’t seem inclined to talk much, and that suited Fabio just fine. He’d prefer if the hoon at the controls kept his attention on the road, anyway.
He also wished this whole episode were over and done with. Let them discover the nanometrics and draw their conclusions. It was not as if they could be extracted from his body anyway. The worst they could do was dishonourably discharge him. And that suited him fine, too. They would have to provide him with transport to the nearest civilian settlement, presumably Europa, where someone would find a use for him, even if it was cutting blocks of ice. Somehow, a boring job like cutting ice would also suit him fine. No thinking, no politics involved. No superiors breathing down his neck. Sanchez . . . Sanchez should really go and fuck himself. Fabio was done with crawling on his knees for people. He was sick of hiding. He was sick of not knowing what he was supposed to have done and making apologies for it, because from all the shards of memories that had come back to him, he’d done good things.
But the shred of determination that had built up evaporated as soon as Fabio left the vehicle and entered the arrival hall.
Goddamned Hansen was waiting for him, wearing his full med-hazard suit. He nodded at Zanetti. “Thanks, I’ll take it from here.”
Zanetti left but the two thugs remained.
Hansen handed him a med-hazard poncho and when Fabio had pulled it over his head, he said, “Let’s go.”
Hansen’s voice sounded kind of muffled through the suit’s hood.
Fabio followed him through the maze of corridors to that horrid med room where he had first come when he arrived at the base. His vision was restricted to the narrow field of view of the visor and its crappy Perspex that made all the walls wobble and warp when he moved his head.
“Sit down.” Hansen sat at his desk.
Fabio sat. He asked, “Can I take this off?” He pointed at the mask.
Hansen ignored the question. He pulled a menu up on his deskscreen and flicked through a few pages. “Ah.” He faced Fabio. “What do you know about yourself?”
“Me?” That was an odd question.
“According to the information I’ve received, you were treated on board the ITV. What do you remember from before, about yourself?”
“Not much. I grew up in Argentina. I think. I don’t remember signing up. I don’t remember any job I did before. Except I think I worked for Dayol Mining, but I have no idea how I came to work there and what it has to do with the military. Is there anything wrong with me?” His heart was now thudding so loud that it was hard to hear anything through the roaring of blood in his ears. That was why no one had said anything to him before: he had a terminal illness and he was going to die soon. That was why his hair was falling out and why he had that implant under his skin in his upper arm.
“Not wrong as such, but you’re a very interesting case. As far as I’ve been able to trace, you’re the last surviving chameleon.”
That was clearly meant to be significant, because he gave Fabio an intense stare.
“Chameleon,” Fabio repeated, now sweating inside the hood. “That’s a type of lizard, right?”
“Yes, it’s a lizard that can change its colour depending on the place where it sits. If it’s on the ground, it becomes brown. If it’s in the trees, it turns green.”
“Oh.” He pushed aside his sleeve, clearly noticing the part where he had pulled out the longer hairs. “I’m not turning blue to match the seat of this chair.”
“Chameleons were part of a secret ISF program that was run, as you remember rightly, on an isolated farm in Argentina. There were only twenty of these people, specially bred to be spies. They were called chameleons because they could change their appearance.”
Fabio frowned at him. “Anyone can do that. Cut your hair, dye it, wear a wig, grow a beard—”
“From male to female and back.”
What?
“You are a hermaphrodite. You have two X chromosomes and one Y chromosome. You need to take hormones to keep yourself male—”
Fabio took in a breath. The medicines in his duffel. The ones that he hadn’t been taking. The ones that would have kept his hair from falling out.
“And you need to take hormones to keep yourself female.”
“But females usually have . . .” He cupped his hands in front of his chest on top of the bright yellow poncho. Seriously, why couldn’t he take this fucking thing off?
“Yes. Every time you start taking the female hormones, you go through a few months of puberty and grow small breasts. When you decide to be male, you change hormone supplements, the breasts shrivel and excess tissue is removed surgically. The point of having people like this is that they can change appearance and move in different circles.”
“You said there were only twenty.”
“Yes. Sadly, you are the only one left.”
The black hole opened in him again. Next, Hansen would say that they’d all died of the horrible infectious disease he had just caught. But he had to ask. “What about the other chameleons?”
Hansen folded his hands on the table. The rubber-gloved fingertips touched each other. “The reason that the chameleon program was discontinued was that people discovered that you cannot breed for luck and you cannot breed for character. There will be a next generation, fully artificial human, but the chameleon program is dead. One problem with the chameleons was that they had a character trait that made them unsuited to serving as intelligence officers in an army.”
“They were dumb?”
“No, Velazquez. They were actually selected for intelligence, although you have done your utmost best to disprove that.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, then.”
“That!” Hansen pointed at Fabio’s mask. “That is why you’re unsuitable. You give lip. In fact, you give so much lip that superior officers beg the training posts to take back these supposedly superior weirdo poofters that end up turning discipline into a mess. You have no discipline. You have no respect. You have no loyalty. The other chameleons are all dead because ten of them were executed for treason. Six got ‘accidentally’ killed while serving, and three were killed by our own troops for the sake of safety. No one even went to court for any of those killings.”
Fabio let those statements hang in the angry silence. Then he said, “But what does that have to do with this?” He pointed at the facemask, which was starting to fog up.
“I was getting to that.
”
“I would like to take it off.”
“You’re not going to be able to. Your blood contains so many infectious nanometrics that it’s a wonder that you haven’t yet started a rebellion over there at Research. They’re the worst kind: mood-altering drugs. You do something and people follow you and they don’t even notice that they’re doing something stupid. The ITV said nothing about your condition. We are going to complain to Sarajevo about this. You are a plant and a spy.”
He took in a deep breath and continued in a calmer voice. “You are to wear a face mask and protective clothing at all times when you’re working with people. We’re going to have to increase your protection and give you a personal minder. You are not to leave your room without this person.”
“You mean I’m under personal arrest?”
“I don’t care what you call it, but if you want, yes.”
“What about Major Doric?”
“You can’t keep working for her. She will be sent a replacement worker.”
“What is going to happen to me?”
“That is not for me to decide.”
“Can I contact someone?” Not that he had any idea who to contact. Sanchez, maybe, but he had a feeling that even Sanchez might not care very much, and would probably be glad to be rid of him. Maybe Sanchez had even sent him to this base to cause trouble and get killed in the process.
“No, you can’t. Sorry.”
Hansen called in the two privates who had waited outside, and they frogmarched Fabio to a small room in the med section behind Hansen’s office.
It had a bare examination table, bolted to the wall, and a cupboard with a security lock on it. In the corner stood the familiar round, stool-like contraption which, according to the sign, was for the collection of human wastes.
They pushed Fabio inside the room and went through all his pockets. They took his PCD. Fabio protested. “I need that thing.” Everything he remembered was on it.
“You’ll get it back once we’ve checked it.”
They left, telling him to wait.
Once the door was closed, the first thing Fabio did was take off that mask and poncho. He flung them onto the bench next to the bed.
The walls seemed to close in on him. He studied the door, but without the worms on his PCD he could do nothing. It was solid. They activated the vacuum lock even though the space on both sides was pressurised. And would remain so. He hoped.
The opening of the ceiling vent might just be wide enough to crawl through, but when he climbed onto the bed, he found that the grate was bolted on tight, making it impossible for him to remove it without tools.
So he paced. The room was two steps wide and three steps long and he walked that strip of polished linoleum many times. There was a black scuff mark to one side of the table leg. There were no manholes in the floor, or loose panels in the walls.
He rattled the doors to the cupboard a few times, but it was shut securely.
There were no news screens, no outside information.
What would they do to him? Nanometrics were illegal, highly experimental molecules engineered to deliver specialist—psychotic—medication to precise locations. They did things like vastly increase a person’s memory, or increase knowledge or change someone’s personality. After some highly publicised botched experiments, they had been banned.
Getting rid of the nanometrics already deployed, however, was a lot less easy.
They were a type of dendromers, molecules that grew outward like a patch of fungus, coating themselves with water-soluble branches. They self-replicated. If you destroyed the original molecules, the outer edges kept growing. Once in the body, they could not be eradicated.
Nanometric actions were normally controlled by an implant, so if that had been the implant at the back of his head, removing it would have set the nanometrics free in his body. Without the implant, the things were likely to be feral.
Interrogators were likely to use electrical shocks. They would reprogram the nanometrics. Or, realising he had this technology, they might send targeted signals that made him tell them whatever they wanted to hear. All recorded and under oath, of course.
On the other hand, if he still had the implant, if it was the thing under the skin of his arm . . . He rubbed the spot. It was sore from having been fingered so often already in the last few days.
If that thing was the implant, then . . . what could they do to him? Was it even big enough for a proper implant? It was definitely something hard and cylindrical under the skin. It moved a bit when he pushed it, and if he dug his fingers under it, the other end pushed up the skin like a tent pole.
That little thing could mean the difference between life and death. If they could reprogram it, they might be able to get information out of him that he didn’t know he had. They might be able to turn him into a traitor. They might completely wipe his personality and turn him into someone new. Someone who blindly obeyed orders and never questioned anything. And somehow that scared him more than anything else. If they changed his personality, then would the old him be trapped inside his head or something? Would they force him to take medicines and turn him into a woman?
Then another thought: how often had they done this already?
He paced through the room, up, down, up, down, up, down—
The door opened.
Hansen came in, while talking to another man. Both wore facemasks, gloves and clear plastic ponchos. The second man was someone whose stiff ISF-grey jacket had so many decorations that one needed sunglasses to look at him. This had to be Base Commander Banparra. He had the stocky build of someone who had grown up in space with the excess of physical training advocated by some bases. His skin was black as the sky outside, his head bald and shiny, and the shiny skin formed a couple of deep folds at the back of his neck.
Like a hippopotamus.
He leaned against the room’s closed door, arms crossed over his chest. A muscle twitched in his temple.
“Take off your uniform,” Hansen said, while going to the cabinet against the back wall. He pressed a combination of numbers on the security panel. When he slid the door open, it revealed leads and cables, and bandages.
Fabio felt sick. “Do I get any say in what happens to me?”
“No. Take off your uniform and lie down on your stomach. I’m not in the mood for tricks.”
Fabio did as he was ordered, glancing at Banparra, who returned an empty, emotionless stare. He was shivering. He felt small and thin and weak. He needed to pee.
Fabio climbed up on the table and clumsily turned around. Nerves were getting the better of him.
“Hurry up.” Hansen pushed him down on the table, while Banparra fiddled with his PCD which he had taken out of his pocket.
Hansen pulled the straps snap, snap.
The he slid the headband over Fabio’s head, and paused his gloved fingers in Fabio’s hair over the scar. He pushed the hair aside. “He’s had an implant removed, Sir.”
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t surprise me.” Banparra’s voice was rich and deep. “Is there anything about Velazquez that’s as it seems?”
“He’s not a chameleon for nothing, sir.” He pushed Fabio’s shoulder up and stared at that part of his pale chest he could see, while the straps cut into Fabio’s wrist. “Hmmm, must have had a decent plastic surgeon to take those boobs off. He’s been taking supplements to suppress female hormones and to make his beard grow, rather poorly, I might add.”
Banparra snorted. “You’re sorry a piece of shit, Velazquez, built to change gender at any time, pumped full of nanometrics to control you. A product of people farms. The fools. Nanometrics never worked that way, and they won’t work that way, ever. And then Sarajevo sends you to spy on me?” He laughed. “To sow discord in my base?”
Hansen shoved Fabio back onto the table. He pulled the headband snug, and attached leads to a monitor in the wall at the back of the security cupboard. “I’m ready, sir.”
Banparra pushed himse
lf off the door. Up until now, Fabio had not realised how tall he was. He bent over the table and regarded Fabio with a look of one observing an unusual animal. With the headband on his head, and strapped face down on the table, Fabio could only see him from the corner of his eye.
“Tell me, Velazquez, where did you work before you were sent here?”
“I don’t remember. I was on the interplanetary. I think I had surgery either on board or just before departure. I don’t remember anything further back than that.”
“Do you remember who sent you?”
“No.” He sure as hell wasn’t going to mention Sanchez.
“But you do remember your work well enough to be listed as a mining astronomer.”
“I didn’t list myself, someone else did; but I do remember most of it. Enough to do all the basic stuff.”
“And your appointment here was coincidence, right?”
“As far as I’m aware, sir.”
“Where did you come from before you came here?”
“You know that. I don’t.”
He snorted. “Don’t try any funny talk on me, piece of shit. You’re a piece of shit, did I tell you that?”
“You did, sir.”
“And what do you have to say about that?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
Banparra hit the side of his head with his flat hand. The slap made Fabio see stars. “I’m getting sick of that answer. It there anything else you can say?”
“I don’t—um—yes, sir.”
“Good. Did you perhaps come from Mars?”
“Could be, sir. I don’t remember any of that. Why do people keep talking about it?”
“Because you single-handedly caused the biggest military fuck-up in the history of mankind. That’s why.”
He—what? Fabio searched his mind, but there was just a big black hole.
“That happened on Mars,” Banparra said. His eyes were startlingly grey. “In case you’ve forgotten. You lying, cheating creep. They should have put a bullet in your brain the moment they caught you, but someone obviously sees some value in you, because they marked you as needing to stay alive by order of the fucking Admiral. No one says anything about why. So they send you to my base, and that Doric bitch claimed you straight away, another Sarajevo plant. Don’t you see anything wrong with that? With what they’re trying to do to my base? Send a fucking research division to keep an eye on me, and now send me the last fucking chameleon alive to keep an eye on me, to report back to Sarajevo, because the fuck they want to tell me how to run my base and how to interact with my neighbours. You may record that.”