Текст книги "Accidental Creatures"

Автор книги: Anne Harris

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

She hung up and turned to see a stream of office workers coming down the stairs to the mezzanine. Oh no, she thought, more panic-stricken employees, how am I going to handle them all by myself? But these people moved in an orderly fashion, and at their head was a figure she recognized. Hector Martin, looking a bit dishevelled, but whole and alive.

He spotted her and quickened his pace. “Anna. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. What about you?”

“Fine.” He turned to a woman in a yellow suit at his left. “Janice, please go down to maintenance and see how things are. We’re going to need them to rescue people who’ve gotten stuck in crawl spaces or elevator shafts. Take some of your colleagues with you.” He turned to Anna. “Is the communications network functioning now?”

She nodded.

“Good. Call here to the security desk when you get there,” he told Janice.

“I called the fire department,” Anna told him, oddly and wholly inappropriately irked at his competence. Hector nodded, his gaze wandering to where the man still dangled from the chandelier. “How long ago?”

“Just now, but they’re coming right away.”

He turned to a tall, balding man, and said, “Take the rest of your people and search the mezzanine and balcony levels, identify anyone who’s injured, but don’t move them, just keep track of where they are for when the paramedics come.”

“Martin, what happened?” Anna said as the office workers departed. “It has to do with your project, doesn’t it? I went to your apartment but you weren’t there. There was someone else – in the shower he was dead.”

He nodded again. “My assistant, Colin Slatermeyer. I think – I know it sounds crazy but I think Graham sent someone to kill me. They got Colin instead.”

“After what’s happened here today, nothing sounds crazy anymore. I had the same idea myself, when I found him.”

“Have you seen Graham this morning?”

“No.” She shook her head. “You still haven’t told me what happened.”

“I will,” Martin said, holing out a hand in placation. “I’ll explain everything, but first we’ve go to make sure everyone is safe.”

It took several hours for the rescue crews to case the building. They pulled victims of the panic out of ventilation ducts and elevator shafts. The man hanging from the chandelier was brought down in a cherry picker. The number of building personnel unaccounted for dwindled rapidly as those who had successfully fled the building were contacted on the now perfectly functional communication network and instructed to take the rest of the day off. However despite security’s best efforts, Nathan Graham could not be located. Besides Colin Slatermeyer, there were five known fatalities so far. Most of them had thrown themselves off the balconies. One man had electrocuted himself trying to chew through a multi-processor cable.

When she wasn’t busy with the rescue efforts, Anna was in frenzied conference with the public relations department. She had managed to buy a media blackout from the fire department by providing the city with a generous donation of flame retardant cellgel. She made a mental note to consider it as a yearly thing, around Christmas, say. It would make for a nice tax shelter and the PR couldn’t be beat. The statement issued to the holoweb cited a temporary power failure, and stressed the fact that all systems were back up and functioning normally. No mention was made of strange voices or mass hysteria. An in-house memo to all GeneSys employees instructed them to direct questions from the media to the public relations department, and the concessions director was instructed to make restitution of damages to shopkeepers contingent on their following the same policy. Through it all, she was deeply grateful that her children were in school. She made arrangements for them to stay with her mother for a few days.

With the press release issued and as many potential leaks stopped as possible, Anna turned back to Hector. “How about that explanation now?” she said.

oOo

Chango crawled back through the window to find Helix resting in the tank, her head above the grow med. “You’re alright. What happened?”

“We won. The mind that was GeneSys has gone to sleep, and dreamed itself into something new. A corporation ruled by both economic and biological imperatives. An organization dedicated to its own survival and the prosperity of its members, both human and Lilim.”

“So what happens now?”

Helix shrugged. “For me, not much. We’ll have to figure out a way to enlarge this tank. Seal off this room and get the temperature and humidity up.” She cast a disparaging glance at the dust-black walls and roof.

“Maybe put in some skylights.”

“You’re staying.” Her heart sank.

Helix nodded. “I’m going to have my daughters, live out my life, and die, right here.”

Chango looked away. “Benny was here. He’s dead now.”

“You killed him?”

She nodded and pointed out the window. “I pushed him.”

“Come here.”

“I can’t. You’re covered with growth medium.”

“At least look at me.”

She turned, letting Helix see her tears.

“Oh Chango.”

“Just promise me one thing, now that you and your mother control GeneSys. Promise me you’ll do something for the vatdivers.”

Helix nodded. “I’ll try.”

oOo

Chango drove home through the little streets, the neglected concrete roadways used only by motorcars and pedestrians. She watched the buildings pass by. Some of them were sparkling and new, with polybond walls and gleaming coats of plaint. Others were crumbling brick, desolately awaiting demolition

– like her life; an edifice of memories, crumbling. Helix had got what she wanted, what she had always wanted. A vat – a simple thing that had nothing to do with her. Ada’s name was cleared, her murderer dead. What was left now, for Chango to do? Anything, she supposed, anything she wanted. She hauled on the steering wheel, guiding the car through a pitted intersection, and headed for Vattown. She went to Vonda’s apartment first, but she wasn’t home, so she tried Josa’s. Sure enough, Vonda was at the bar, nursing a draft. “Benny’s dead,” she told her, sitting down next to her. Vonda turned to look at her. “He’s dead?” She shook her head. “Well, he killed Ada. I guess I should be glad he’s dead. He lied to all of us all those years. I thought he was my best friend, but he wasn’t. It was you, and you were right, Ada didn’t dive blasted. I should have believed you.”

“It’s alright. You ran the tests, you saw the results first-hand. And I didn’t make it any easier, implying that you doctored the results. For the record, I never really believed that. I pretended to, because it was easier than accepting the alternative.”

Vonda nodded. “So how did he die?”

Josa brought Chango a draft, waving her off when Chango tried to pay her. She glanced between the two of them, and disappeared into the back.

“He tried to kill me. I pushed him off the top of the GeneSys tower.

“What were you doing up on top of the GeneSys building?”

Chango took a deep drink of beer. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

oOo

As soon as she got a transceiver, Helix called Hyper. “Can you find Vonda for me? I need to talk to her.”

Hyper nodded, and put her on hold. She was on hold for quite a while, and then Vonda’s face materialized with Josa’s bar in the background. “I want to talk to you about the vatdivers,” said Helix.

“Chango told me. You and your kind, the Lilim. You’ve taken over GeneSys.” She frowned, and her voice became brittle with anger, “So I guess that leaves us vatdivers out in the cold, doesn’t it? I hope you’ll at least honor our severance packages and workers comp. We may be out of our jobs tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean that ten years from now we won’t get sick. It’s bad enough we’re losing our jobs. You can’t just abandon us. We’ve given our lives to that fucking corporation you just took over.”

Helix shook her head. “I didn’t say I was laying the vatdivers off. Nothing abut the vatdivers has been decided yet. That’s why I called you. To talk.”

“To talk.” Vonda shook her head slowly. “You’re not canning us?”

“No.”

Vonda managed half a smile. “When Chango told me what went down, I figured that with the riot and all you’d waste no time getting rid of us.”

“No. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the union rep. We’ll negotiate a contract.”

Vonda laughed with incredulity. “A contract. For what? If the Lilim are doing the diving -”

“There aren’t enough of us yet,” Helix interrupted. “I’m only the second queen, and pregnant with my first clutch. It’ll be at least another year before the third queen is born, unless my mother beats me to it. Anyway, it’ll be years, probably five or more, before the Lilim are populous enough to take over production.”

“So in the meantime it’s business as usual,” said Vonda, switching back to bitterness again. “We dive and die, and when you don’t need us anymore, you cast us aside.”

“Business as usual?” said Helix, suddenly angry. “A union contract? Negotiated benefits and workers comp packages? I guess you want me to wave my arms and make vatsickness go away, but I can’t do that. All I can do is urge Hector to make vatsickness research a personal priority, and see to it that the company deals fairly with you from now on.”

Vonda nodded, chastened. “I’m sorry, I -” she shrugged. “I expected a raw deal from you. But here you’re talking unions, contracts.” She shook her head. “I wish Ada were here.” Vonda looked back at her suddenly. “Just tell me one thing. What happens when there are more of you?”

“Even after the Lilim fill the vats, technicians will be needed to test samples, monitor ph levels, and calculate seed mixtures. Anddeal with the other company departments. We do not like to leave our nests once we have them,” said Helix, leaning back and folding her arms. “We will need human representatives to attend meetings and act as liaisons to other departments.”

Vonda laughed. “And you want the vatdivers to do that for you? The same people who tried to kill you yesterday? What makes you think they’ll accept working for you at all? “

“You do.” Helix said, leaning forward. “You saved my life in that riot. And when I took my suit off in the vat, I endangered yours. I pushed you as hard as I could. I could have broken your seals. I could have killed you. And I wouldn’t have meant to, but at the time, I wouldn’t have cared either.” She nodded slightly. “I put you at risk from something I myself am immune to. I can understand why so many of the vatdivers wanted to kill me. But you didn’t. You had more reason than the rest of them, and you didn’t let me die.”

“You made an alliance between the divers and the Lilim possible by standing up for the real goals of the labor movement Ada started. You’ll convince the divers that such an alliance is in their best interests, and the contract you negotiate for them will prove it. As for the rest of it, we will all have time to get used to one another.”

“So what you’re saying, basically, is that you’ve taken over my company.”

It was, without a doubt, the strangest conference call Anna had ever had. She recognized Helix and Lilith from the dream fragments in the elevator. They both seemed to be floating in vats of liquid – that would be the growth medium Hector told her was so important to them. He was there in the office, sitting beside her so his image could be picked up by the transceiver.

“Yes,” said Lilith. “GeneSys was our enemy, now we are GeneSys.”

“And that business with the blackout, the voices, that was you.”

“It can happen again, if you try to interfere with us,” said Lilith. Anna bit back her anger and let the threat ride, for the moment.

“You have to understand,” said Helix. “We’re a new species. We have to survive.”

“But youhave to understand,” said Anna, leaning forward. “GeneSys is a corporation. If it doesn’t carry on the business of being a corporation, it won’t survive, and neither will you.”

“That’s where you come in,” said Helix.

“What do you mean by that?”

“We need somebody to run the company for us.”

“I see. And my people?”

“There aren’t enough of us to take on all the responsibilities involved.”

“The Lilim do not care for numbers,” said Lilith.

“That too. We just want vats for our daughters.”

Anna raised her eyebrows. “Vats for your daughters? How many will you need?”

“Her first clutch will stay with her,” said Lilith. “But there will be a queen. She will need her own nest.”

“And how soon will that be?”

“A year or so.”

“The Lilim don’t really reproduce all that rapidly,” said Hector.

Well that was something, at least. “In a year. If things go smoothly, if you don’t interfere with the operations of the company, I don’t see any problem.” She turned to Hector. “About this blue poly. You say it’s... in the wiring?”

“It is the wiring,” said Hector.

“I don’t understand.”

“The blue poly eats the electrical components, and in the process incorporates their functions. Electricity is still being transmitted, only now it’s moving through a biological medium, like nerves,” he explained.

“Nerves.” Anna looked around her office. The lights were on, the temperature comfortable, and her multi-processor hummed contentedly to itself, the same as always, but maybe not. “What’s the difference, then?”

“The difference is that the phage translator is no longer needed to connect the multi-processor brains to the electrical network.”

“But what about the voltage? The phage translator was necessary to dampen the electrical signal to the brains to a level acceptable to a biological organism, am I right?”

“Yes, but the blue poly seems to absorb the excess and use it towards new growth. Of course, once it’s everywhere, we won’t need to generate so much power.”

Anna thought about it. If phage translators became obsolete, Minds Unlimited stock would take a hard hit. They’d be ripe for a buyout. “How soon before it spreads beyond GeneSys?”

“Not long at all, it’s probably happening now.“

She shivered with dread and excitement. GeneSys was on the cutting edge of a revolution in energy systems. With advance knowledge like this, she could make a killing. Minds Unlimited was only the beginning.

“There’s one other thing,” said Hector.

“What’s that?”

“The biological network, once it’s established, is likely to be much more mutable than one composed of wires and chips. We may experience some spontaneous renetworking.”

“What do you mean?”

“The brains may choose to do things differently than we would.”

“That explains why my coffee maker reminded me of my eight o’clock appointment when I switched it on this afternoon.”

“Yeah, things like that.”

“They say we have brought them something much longed for,” said Lilith.

“Like what?”

“Time to think.”

“But what if they spend too much time thinking about other things? What if they start talking to each other and forget to keep the ventilation system running?”

All she got were uncomforting shrugs on all sides.

oOo

The blue polymer was spreading rapidly through the city. As soon as he learned of it, Hyper went down to the power station on Grand Boulevard with a pair of insulated gloves and a wire stripper and got himself a piece of the stuff. He used it to treat his robots. Within a few hours they were biologized. He gathered them on the front lawn of his house; newly graceful creatures of metal flesh. He vaulted astride Robo-Mime and set off with his herd through the streets of Vattown to Mavi’s house. The noise of his entourage brought her out onto the porch, her eyebrows knitted quizzically.

“Where’s Chango?”

“She’s inside.”

“Tell her to get out here.”

Mavi disappeared back into the house, and long moments passed. Finally Chango came out. She eyed the robots guardedly. “What are you up to?”

“According to Slatermeyer’s calculations, the blue poly will reach the traffic net today. C’mon, saddle up, you don’t want to miss this.”

“There won’t be anything to see.”

“Maybe not, but it’s a historic moment. Human beings are losing control of their inventions. Don’t you want to be there when it happens?”

“Not particularly. Besides, what’s so special about the traffic net? Most of Grand Boulevard is already running on blue poly.”

“But once it gets into the levway, it’ll go everywhere. It’ll be in the 'burbs by tonight. C’mon, what have you got to do today? Mope around some more?”

She shrugged, and climbed reluctantly onto the shoulders of Close Enough for Jazz. “Is this safe?”

“Just hang on,” he said, and directed the robots west, towards the levway. They stood on the embankment, watching levcars whiz past below as the sun inched its way towards the horizon.

“How long do we have to stand here? It’s probably happened already,” said Chango.

“No, look.” Hyper pointed to where a solid line of levcars crept along the road surface at a fraction of their normal speed. “That’s got to be the front edge.”

“Is that as fast as they can go?”

“No, but the road’s keeping everyone back from the discontinuity. Once it’s all biologized, speeds will return to normal, but for the next few days, there’ll be traffic jams, something no one’s had to put up with for years.”

“All this new stuff – the brains, the blue poly, Helix and her people – I wonder if human beings are going to get left behind.”

“Maybe. But so many of us already have been. You and I, we’ll be alright. We already know how to survive in a world that was made for someone else.”

Chango nodded and cast her gaze north, to the peak of the GeneSys building, just beginning to glow golden in the gathering dusk.

oOo

Helix sank into the waters. She felt the cramping in her abdomen, felt herself widening as the first egg slid out and drifted to the bottom of the tank. It was followed by eleven more. She ducked beneath the waters, gently running her hands across the slippery surface of the membranes. Her daughters, she thought, and smiled.

The End