Текст книги "Accidental Creatures"

Автор книги: Anne Harris

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“I know, it’s boring, but it’s the only mutation I’ve got,” he said. She nodded in silence, and as casually as she could manage, slipped the raincoat from her shoulders. It felt good to stretch her arms and feel the air against her skin.

She watched Hyper for his reaction; saw his eyes travel down her body and up again to her face. He was smiling. “Now that’s a significant mutation. Do you have complete use of them?”

“Yeah,” she said, sliding into the chair, “but my bottom hands are better at fine work, and they don’t really lift up to the sides too well, top ones go three-sixty degrees, though.” Helix crisscrossed her hands about her knees and rocked self-consciously.

“That is so cool looking.”

“Thanks,”

“You know,” said Hyper, “She needs to meet Orielle.”

“Not Orielle,” said Chango.

“Who’s Orielle?” said Helix.

“Oh, just somebody who would make you fade right into the woodwork,” said Hyper.

“She’s a drug dealer,” said Chango.

“And a drug inventor, don’t forget about that,” said Hyper.

“Yeah, but she still makes her bread and butter by selling blast in this community. It keeps the vatdivers down, keeps them from doing anything about the company. They just do as they’re told, and collect their pay and use it to get blasted, that’s all.”

“It’s not just the blast, Chango,” said Hyper, “besides, you used to do blast, before...”

“Yeah, but I don’t any more, do I? And you know why, too.”

“You always say Ada didn’t dive blasted. Don’t you believe that?”

Chango glared at him, and finally stood up, to walk past them and stare at something hanging from the ceiling. “Fuck you, Hyper,” she growled softly.

Hyper shrugged and looked at Helix. “She’s a bundle of contradictions, she is. Can I get you something?

Water, Cool-Aid, Chromium 50?"

“Water, please.”

Chango, still standing, still staring at the ceiling, shook her head. “You’re going to regret it.”

“You want anything, Chango?” asked Hyper, heading towards the back of the house.

“Only your immortal soul,” she said, and sat back down in the lev seat. Hyper returned in an instant with a cup of doubtful looking water and handed it to Helix. She sniffed it. It smelled like solder. Casually she set it down on the floor.

Hyper tapped his foot, rooted around in his shirt pocket, came up with a half-empty pack of Reefer Madness, pulled one out, lit it and offered Helix the pack.

"No thanks."

"I'll take one," said Chango.

"So you're new in town huh?" said Hyper, switching on his holotransceiver and flipping through channels.

"Well, new to Vattown."

"That's what I mean. I heard – I heard you were adopted, by some corporate dink, excuse me, professional man."

"He's a research scientist."

“Oh yeah? What kind of stuff does he do?"

Helix shrugged, "I don't know."

"You don't know? Well, what kinds of projects is he working on? I mean generally, don't spill any trade secrets or anything, for gods sakes."

She shook her head, "I don't know."

Hyper stared at her. "Industrial ecology, biomathematics, gene splicing..." Helix shrugged again.

"You've been living with the man for, what, ten years, and you don't know. Okay." Hyper drew on his cigarette and pulled the transceiver’s imaging lens down over one eye. He glanced at the hologram reflected through the lens, his eyes flickering as he called up new files. He glanced from Helix to the holo several times in rapid succession. “Do think I could-I don’t mean to be bold, or embarrass you or anything,” he glanced at Chango and then back to her, “would you mind, could I look at your back?”

“My back?”

“Yeah, it looks like you only have one collarbone. I was trying to mount a set of manipulating arms onto the existing armature of this robot I’m working on. I thought I’d have to hang it up, but if I can see how it’s been done, with you-”

“Hyper builds robots,” said Chango, answering Helix’s glance with a reassuring nod. She felt like she was outside herself as she stood, turned her back to him and lifted her tunic with her upper arms. Beyond the numbness of her fear she felt a burning curiosity. What would he be able to see?

She heard him looking, and then felt his hands on her back. She flinched, and then relaxed as they ran, warm and soft, along her muscles and bones. Of course she couldn’t see the hologram he was working on, but she sensed he was tracing her.

When he was through he slipped the transceiver over her head, so she could look through the imaging lens and see what he’d drawn – an anatomical rendering of her back, arms and shoulders. “What are you going to do with that?” she asked, backsliding into a paranoid fantasy of her image plastered on every building in Vattown, labeled with the words ‘Look at this freak.’

Hyper led her to the work area, to a thing with the lower body of a small tractor, and two waldo arms bolted to a steel drum with a hole cut in the middle. A gas combustion engine painted to resemble a face rested on a pivot on top of the drum.

“See, if I mount ball sockets here and here-” His fingers traced the metal struts the same way they had touched her own flesh. “-I can support the second set of arms without adding a whole new framework for them.”

“What does it do?”

“Well, it’s not finished yet. Eventually I want to put a pivot piston in here, and that’ll make the head nod up and down as it rumbles and spews smoke. And then it rolls around on the tractor treads, and the arms are operated by radio control and can pick stuff up. I want the extra arms so they can hold this-” He hefted a dented saxophone. “I’m calling it Close Enough for Jazz.”

Chango wandered in from the front room. “Do you still need a counterweight for the pivot piston? I may have just the thing.”

“Oh yeah? That’s cool because I haven’t found anything... symbolically correct yet.”

“It’s out in my car, why don’t you come out and see.”

oOo

“Did you get into that data card yet?” asked Chango as she and Hyper walked to her car.

“What? Uh, no. No, It’s not giving up easily, and I’ve been busy with Robo-Mime. Is she asking about it?”

“She did at first, but I think she’s forgotten about it.”

“Well, she’s obviously never read any of it. Unless all that ignorance was an act. She any more forthcoming about her father to you?”

Chango shrugged, “I think his name is Hector. I didn’t really ask about him.”

“Hector? Hector Martin?”

“That’s it,” said Chango.

Hyper choked, "Her father is theDr. Hector Martin? Christ!"

"You know him?" asked Chango.

"Know him? I know of him. He's the inventor of the multis.”

“Multi’s.” Chango shook her head. So Helix’s adopted father was the man behind the multi-processor brains that run nearly every major networked system in the world. Maglev, stock market, polymer plants. Shit, even the temperature and ventilation systems in most big buildings. “Geez,” Chango cast her gaze to the tower of the GeneSys building, hazy in the distance. “Talk about friends in high places.”

oOo

Hyper gave Chango a crate of DataKleen memory enzyme in exchange for the chrome fossil from the Russell Industrial Center. They drove to a faded cement block house surrounded with sunflowers.

“Pele’s house,” Chango said.

The woman who came out the front door to greet them had skin like a painted pony, irregular patches of black on a white background. The color scheme carried over into the cloud of thick hair surrounding her head. She was dressed in a yellow housecoat. “Hey Chango, I hope you came to fix my truck.”

“Actually it was more to make a trade, but what’s the problem?”

“It’s burning oil.”

“Ow. They’ll take you off the road for that.”

“You don’t think I know it? I’ve got a lot of goods to get to the market this week.”

“Alright, I’ll take a look.”

Helix sat on the porch with Pele, drinking iced tea and watching Chango crawl around under Pele’s blue pickup truck.

“I still like to watch her fix stuff,” said Pele, glancing sidelong at Helix. “What about you?”

“Me? What?”

“Do you like watching her? She’s a nice girl you know, but fickle.”

Helix looked at Pele in confusion, she was going to ask her what fickle was, but she got distracted by Pele’s appearance. “You go to the Eastern Market, to sell stuff.”

“All the time.”

“You see a lot of people.”

“If I’m lucky.”

“How do you deal with... with-”

Pele smiled. “With this?” She waved her hand at her skin, her hair. “I don’t ever really think about it, unless someone reminds me. I get that sometimes, from people who don’t know me. They always ask me the same thing, ‘Are you white or black?’ They really don’t mean anything by it, they’re just surprised, and they say the first thing that comes into their heads. I don’t take it to heart, you know? In the end, they have to deal with who I am, not what I look like.”

oOo

Chango traded Pele the DataKleen for a cube of holotoys and collected a carton of reefers for fixing the truck. “See?” she said to Helix in the car, “this is how it works. You get by.”

“Where are we going now?”

“We’ll go to Hannah’s. I’m hungry.”

“Who’s Hannah?”

"Hannah's Eclectic Homestyle Restaurant. It’s been around for ages. Used to be a Polish place but back around 19 or 20 it got bought by Hannah and her husband Ricky. Hannah just started cooking whatever came to mind with whatever was at hand. Menu changed constantly. Her daughter Rita runs it now. Food's still pretty good, but Hannah, man... Well they say Rita's daughter Gabrielle has the touch, and she's almost sixteen. She'll be out of school soon." Chango shrugged. "One can hope." The Eclectic Homestyle Restaurant was housed in a brown brick building with a peaked cornice and blue tiles set in at the corners of the doorway. Chango led the way under a red awning and flung open the door. Helix followed her into a large, bright room filled with tables and chairs, humid with the smells of food and loud with the chatter of voices and the rattle of silverware. "Hey Chango!" cried a voice over the din. In the far corner of the dining room a bald young man waved vigorously at them.

"Magnusson," Chango murmured as they wound their way between the tables, "one of my very best buddies." As they got to the table Chango reached across it and snagged a sausage off of his plate.

"Hey!" he protested but Chango only chortled gleefully and ate it, waving her burned fingertips. "Magoo," she said, ushering Helix into the seat across from him, and sitting beside her, "meet Helix. Helix, this is -"

"Magnusson," he interjected, leaning forward and extending a broad, flat hand. Her fingers brushed the back of it as they shook. His skin was smooth. He had a round head and a round, pudgy body. He was not only bald, she noticed. He didn't have any eyebrows or facial hair either. That’s why his skin felt so smooth. He didn't have any hair at all.

"Nice to meet you," said Helix, suddenly realizing with a twinge that she was staring at him. His eyes were pale, pale grey, colorless, but not red. He looked like a grown up baby.

"Magoo cooks here. He's gonna get us free lunches, right Magoo?" He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, sure, long as you don't mind taking my bus shift tonight."

"Bus shift? You're still doing dishes nights? I thought Rita said she'd put you on prep." Magnusson shrugged, "Sure, she said it. But now I'm doing lunch rush 'cause Octavio got sick, and meanwhile, they still need busers at night. So, I'm busing."

"That sucks. She promised you."

He snorted, "C'mon, nobody believes promises, not from an employer, right?" Chango nodded acknowledgment. "It still sucks," she added.

"Yeah, well, it can only be so bad you know. I ain't divin'," he softly nodded his head towards a group of five seated in a booth on the other wall. Tank harnesses hung off of their lean, divesuited bodies. Hard men and women, mostly older than them but there were a few with eyes it seemed already darkened at the sight of death, though it stood for them, probably thirty, even forty years away. They were an animated group, smoking and laughing and living it up, partying at the end of their shift. But death hung around them like a cloud of smog that ground its darkness right into their pores so that they seemed steeped in something. Something that would slowly curl around the double helix of their DNA and twist it, twist them, into something else. Helix found herself searching their faces, trying to find beneath the angled planes of skin the shape they would become.“Why do they do it?” she asked, “if it’s so dangerous?”

“For the money.” said Magnusson.

“Most of them only plan to dive for five years, take their pay and get someplace where the living is cheap,” said Chango. “Only sometimes they find that five years isn’t enough, sometimes they find that nothing is enough.”

One of the vatdivers – a tall, dark-haired man – glanced over at them and detached himself from the group. “Oh no, it’s Benjamin,” grumbled Magnusson under his breath.

He approached their booth with quick strides of his long, lean legs. His vatleather jacket, still new, crinkled stiffly as he leaned over the table. "How's it going over here?" he asked. He had hard, bright blue eyes.

"Hi Benny," said Chango, "What's new with you?"

“Not much, just snagging goobers.” He slid into the booth opposite Chango and Helix. Grumbling, Magnusson slid his plate over and made room. Benny reached a hand towards his sausages, but he brandished a fork at him. “Back off, man,” he snarled.

Laughing, Benny rested his chin in his hands and looked at Helix. “So, you’re the new girl, huh? Nice to meet you.”

Helix nodded and leaned closer to Chango, “Hi,” she said, her voice cracking. She felt her face grow warm.

“I heard you ran into a spot of trouble,” said Benny, “how are your ribs?"

"Much better, thanks."

"She heals fast," said Chango.

“So how do you like Vattown?”

“It’s nice,” Helix said, “it smells good.”

They all stared at her.

“I’ve heard this place get called a lot of things,” said Magnusson, “but good smelling, never.”

“Yeah, top on most peoples grudge list about Vattown is the reek of the growth medium.” said Benny.

“You really like it?”

Helix shrugged, “Yeah, it smells... warm.”

“Mmm,” Benny grunted, then turned to the others, “You hear about the new hiring requirements?” he asked.

“What, you have to be seven feet tall and blond now? I’d think they’d be happy to get anybody they can, these days,” said Chango.

“That’s just it, they are. They’ve just loosened up the genetic requirements, so first generation mutations are okay.”

“What?” said Magnusson.

“You heard it, they’re hiring sports now. Of course they’ll be classified temporaries, so the company can get around giving them benefits, including health insurance.”

“Fucking company,” said Chango, “this is why we need a union, Benny, to keep them from getting away with crap like this.”

“I’ve never argued with that, Chango.”

“No, you just won’t do anything about it.”

“Aw give it a rest already, would you? If you’re so keen on the movement, become a vatdiver and form one. You can, now.”

“I’m not going to throw my life away for a bunch of people who won’t even help themselves.”

“My feeling exactly,” said Benny.

“Where would you go, to apply?” asked Helix.

“Are you serious?” asked Benny.

“No,” said Chango. “She’s not. You’re not serious.”

“I was just wondering. He said they were hiring, and I need a job so... What is it like, diving?” she asked Benny.

“Well, you put on an anodized rubber suit that makes you sweat, a face mask, breathing equipment and a twelve pound air tank and then you go and swim around in a bunch of poisonous, murky water. It’s a real giggle.”

“I was just asking.”

“Well you don’t need to know,” said Chango, “because you’re not going to do it.”

Helix stared at Chango, sudden anger lighting her eyes. “I can decide that myself,” she said. They went on staring at each other for a moment more, Helix having difficulty keeping her eyes from jumping back and forth between blue and green, and then they both looked away.

“She’s right, you shouldn’t dive,” said Benny, his eyes wandering about the outlines of her raincoat.

“Someone like you would be a prime candidate for vatsickness.” Helix studied the place mat in front of her. It had a scalloped border of disinfectant enzyme, pale pink paste that left a little streak of bioelectric neutralizer on the surface of the table every time you moved it. Enough fidgeters, and you’d probably never have to wipe the table down.

“I’ve got some holotoys for Hugo.” said Chango. “How’s he doing, anyway?”

Benny shrugged, “About the same. You know how it is with vatsickness. He got up and walked around a little bit yesterday. This morning he only kept water down. He’s strong. It’s going to take a long time.”

“They should just throw him in the vat and let him finish,” said Helix. They all stared at her again. Benny blinked and cleared his throat. “You’re probably right,” he said. Chango was glaring at her. “I’m sorry,” said Helix. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“No. I understand. We caught it early, he has a mild dose. That doesn’t make it less fatal, it just means it takes longer to kill him. When my time comes, I’m just going to keep diving. If it has to happen, at least it can be quick like with-”

“Don’t you even say that Ada was lucky,” said Chango.

Benny tilted his head to one side. “In a way, she was, Chango.”

“Here,” Chango handed him the holocube. “These are for Hugo. You can pay me later. We have to go.”

“Chango-”

“See you later.”

“Who’s Ada?” asked Helix when they got in the car.

“My sister,” said Chango, turning the ignition key with exceptional force. She pulled out of the parking space with a burst of acceleration. Helix was waiting for her to calm down before making any further inquiries, but then they drove past the vat yards.

Rows of round metal buildings with glass domes slid by like the silvered flanks of some huge beast basking in the brightening afternoon. The air was filled with the living smell of growth medium. Chango didn’t want her to work there, Benny had good reasons why she shouldn’t, but Helix looked at those domes and breathed the air, and she knew it wouldn’t matter what anybody said. The knowledge nestled inside her and made her feel light and... happy. The sun was coming out, as if the day welcomed her joy.

Chapter 7 – The Death of Ada Chichelski

Chango had been at Josa’s when her sister had the accident. She’d been playing up to Pele by putting Otimache Mints on the jukebox, and buying her beer.

“Wanna dance?” she asked, swinging her hips and shaking her shoulders. Josa’s was nearly empty, it was just her and Pele, a few out-of-work vatdivers lingering in the shadows, and Josa, behind the bar.

“Not until you tell me what you did last night,” Pele said, pouting.

“I told you, sweetheart, I got drunk at Vonda’s, and Hyper was there, and since he lives right next door, he let me crash at his place.”

“Uh-huh.” In the dim light, Pele seemed to be there only in patches. “You didn’t sleep with him?”

Chango bit her lips and said nothing. It wouldn’t matter if she protested her innocence, Pele would know she was lying. She was a lousy liar, and she hated to do it.

Pele shook her head in shock and exasperation. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you! Did we or did we not have a conversation last week in which you said, ‘I’m ready for monogamy.’? That wasyou, wasn’t it?”

Chango climbed onto the bar stool next to her and put her head in her hands. “I know, but Hyper, heI-”

“Oh don’t tell me it’s because you were drunk!”

“No. I mean, it kind of was, but, we-”

“Are you in love with him?”

“Not inlove, I don’t think, but-We’ve known each other for forever.”

“ We’veknown each other for forever too, and I’ve known Hyper for forever. We all grew up here, we all went to school together. None of us have ever known more than the same thirty people our whole fucking lives! What has that got to do with anything? Do you love him?”

Chango shrugged. “Yes.”

“Fine.” Pele slammed her beer down on the counter. “I hope you’ll be very happy together.”

“But I love you too.” said Chango, grabbing Pele’s arm as she slid from her stool.

“You can’t. You can love Hyper or you can love me, but you can’t love both of us.” Pele wrested her arm from Chango’s grip, and headed for the door.

“Yes I can.” Chango said to her retreating back. Pele did this every time Chango slept with someone else. Theirs was a relationship of punctuated monogamy. Usually after a couple of weeks, she’d let her back in the house. In the meantime, Chango would have to stay with friends, maybe Hyper. Chango felt bad though, about telling her she wouldn’t sleep around anymore. At the time, she’d really meant it. But then last night at Vonda’s, Hyper had been so...

“Chango?” It was April, her broad form silhouetted against the bright light from the open doorway. Chango blinked at her, her eyes accustomed to the dimness of Josa’s bar.

“April? What are you doing here, it’s the middle of your shift.”

“Chango.” April shut the door behind her and approached her with more eagerness than she would ordinarily express, but not more pleasure. As she came closer, Chango saw the deep lines of worry that creased her forehead. “It’s Ada,” she said, when she got close enough to speak in a normal tone of voice. “Will you come?”

“Of course,” said Chango, sliding from her barstool, feeling suddenly cold, “but what is it?”

April looked at her, and even in this dim light, Chango could see the tears in her eyes. “She got doused.”

“No! Oh my gods, no!”

April put a strong arm around Chango’s shoulders and gently propelled her towards the door. “She’s still at the vat house. I’ve already found Mavi, she’s on her way over there now.”

When she got there, April showed her to a small tiled room with a single narrow bench along the far wall. Mavi was there, standing over Ada who crouched on the bench in a flimsy paper gown, shaking. She’d always been bigger than Chango, but she looked small now – small and pale even under the dusting of biocidal powder that whitened her skin and hair.

“What happened?” she said as she walked slowly towards them.

Mavi looked up, her face as white as Ada’s, and tight with grief and fury. “Seals came loose,” she said through gritted teeth.

Chango breathed in sharply, the air was acrid with the lingering fumes of the chemicals that had been used to wash Ada. “Faulty equipment?”

Mavi shrugged once in sharp dismissal, “They’re checking. What difference does it make?”

Ada shuddered and bent over to vomit between her feet. The sweet smell of stomach acid joined the other odors in the room. Mavi cradled her in her arms and wiped her mouth with a tissue. Tentatively Chango reached out to lay her fingertips on her sister’s arm. Her skin was grainy and dry with biocide powder, and cool. Ada’s eyes were slits, glimmering with a shifting blue as she looked at her. Her crusted lips parted, “Get me out of here.”

They all got a ride in the company ambulance, Coral, Benny, Val and Hugo carrying Ada out on a stretcher, their faces drawn and blank like pall bearers. They might as well have been. She’d received contact on roughly forty percent of her skin. By vatsickness standards, it would be quick. Chango remembered the sting in the soles of her feet when she leapt from the back of the ambulance onto the black brilliantine road, to run to the house and open the door, holding it wide as they carried her in. After they’d maneuvered Ada safely abed, Chango and the vatdivers, in silent mutuality, left her alone with Mavi and shut the door.

Coral, Val and Hugo stood around the kitchen table, like misplaced trees. Benny made coffee while Chango slumped in the doorway. No one said anything. There was only the hiss of the coffee maker and the faint, soft sound of weeping from the other room, like the lapping of waves on a distant shore. They were out of reach of that ocean, there in the grim golden glow of the little kitchen, bound and barricaded by a single, overriding thought. “It didn’t happen to me.” That was the silent conversation they had before the final gurgle of the coffee maker.

Benny brought mugs to the table with wooden solemnity, his long face still and quiet, his eyes blank as if he was not really there, as if he was thinking very hard of something else.

“How long did she soak?” asked Chango.

Val and Coral shrugged. Benny continued to stare at his hands. “About five minutes,” said Hugo.

“Five minutes?” Chango put her mug down. “How is that possible?”

Hugo and Coral and Val exchanged uncomfortable glances. “Apparently she wasn’t immediately aware of the leakage,” said Coral guardedly.

“Not aware? How could she not be aware.”

“Because she was blasted,” said Benny, finally looking up to fix her with a cold hard stare.

“Blasted? At work?”

“I know,” Coral said, “I can’t believe it either. They must have made a mistake.”

“I saw the blood tests. She must have gassed just before her shift,” said Benny Chango shook her head. “No way.”

“Chango, I saw the lab results. I also saw her last night with Orielle.” Benny leaned over the table, his hands clenched in fists in front of him. “I hate to say it, but she’s been using a lot lately.”

“She got blasted the other night at Josa’s,” said Val, “Thursday.”

“Oh and you don’t get blasted there every weekend and most week nights,” said Chango. Val shrugged. He didn’t say anything, but Chango could see him thinking it. “At least I don’t take it on the job.”

oOo

“This completely discredits our movement.” said April. “GeneSys will just chalk it up as another example of diver recklessness, another excuse not to take our complaints seriously. If Ada didn’t care about her life, why should they? She was supposed to be an example to counter the vatdiver stereotype. She was the spearhead of our movement, and now she’s sabotaged us.”

Chango shifted on her cushion in the living room of Vonda’s apartment and looked at the faces around her, expecting someone to defend her sister, but they were all silent either in complicity or secretiveness, and no one would return her gaze.

Mavi wasn’t there. Mavi was at home taking care of Ada, who they spoke of as if she were already dead. Somebody here had to speak for her, and Chango was the only one who would. “How can you say that, after all she’s done? If it weren’t for Ada, there wouldn’t be a movement. And you wouldn’t have the improvements in safety standards that the movement has won.”

“She made a mockery of those, didn’t she?” said Vonda, to a round of grim snickering. Chango glared at her. “She got you the job of technical analyst, Vonda. So the divers would have one of their own to administer tests and analyze their results. She paid for you to take the classes from her own pocket, have you forgotten?” Vonda didn’t answer her. She wouldn’t even look at her.

“Chango’s right,” said Benny, “Whatever she’s done now, we can’t turn our back on everything she —

we accomplished. We have to preserve what credibility we can.”

“How are we going to do that?” asked Jewel.

“By proving that her accident was a company plot,” said Chango.

“Oh come on,” said April. “Six of us in this room saw her buying blast from Orielle the night before.”

“So? That doesn’t mean she used it before her dive.”

“The medical reports say she did,” said Jewell.

“Maybe they were doctored.”

“By who? Me?” said Vonda, her fists pounding the couch. “I prepared it, I took her blood and her skin samples and I carried them to the lab and I did the analysis. There was no one else. If her report was doctored, then I’m the one who did it. Is that what you believe?”

Chango looked away, her eyes burning. She didn’t believe that, not really. But to say otherwise would be to admit that Ada was dying of her own negligence, and she couldn’t do that. Not when she had to go back to the house tonight and see her, or what was left of her, and the rest, transformed into something else. No, whether it was true or not, she would not accept that Ada had brought this on herself. There was an awkward silence while everyone waited for her to say no, and preserve the fragile cohesion of the group. But Chango didn’t say anything.

“I think the best way to move forward is to alter our strategy,” said Leo, finally, “make a clean break with the past. Let GeneSys know who the leadership of this movement is and what we stand for.”

“And who is the leadership, now?” asked Chango.

“Benny, obviously,” said April, “He was Ada’s right hand.”

“Maybe we should have a leadership committee, instead of a president.” said Leo. “Genesys might take us more seriously if we don’t appear to be an, um, charismatic movement.”

“Or we could have anyone who’s interested write an anonymous proposal for why they should be president, and then we could vote on them,” said Jewell.

“We could form a committee to evaluate the president’s performance.”

“Why don’t you just form a committee to decide how to vote for the members of the committee that decides which fingers the leadership committee should stick up their asses?” said Chango, and she got up and left. No one noticed her go; they were all offering suggestions and agreeing with one another. Except for Vonda, who watched her go with baleful, injured eyes.

oOo

So amid shame and scandal, Mavi and Chango nursed Ada to her death. She was bedridden from the start. Ada, who’d always been the strong one, the pure one, untainted by the waters of the vats, suddenly needed her sister’s help to get to the bathroom. It was as if some secret contract between her and the universe was suddenly withdrawn, she no longer received its protection, and the sun stopped shining on her. She became sallow and gaunt, her body wasting away under the unsustainable demands of her renegade cells.

Her skin became dry and papery, crumbling at the base of tumors which thrust from the deep tissues of her arms and legs, reshaping her with their shiny pink masses, like mountains erupting to transfigure the face of the earth.

Ada always had a spare sort of beauty, the kind that let you fill in the spaces, but now every plane, every angle, every jut of bone and curve of flesh was being reworked with blotches and moles and cysts, transforming her from Bauhaus beauty to medieval gargoyle.