Accidental Creatures (32 page)

Her sisters swam away, and for a little while there was only the vague speaking of the waters lapping against her skin. A touch she had not recognized as speech before, because all it really did was tell her who she was, and where.

“You can’t stay here. You have to have your own life, your own nest,” came Lilith’s answer. Night Hag, thought Helix, you were Night Hag, weren’t you? And she didn’t have to wait for her mother’s returning touch to know. Lilith had contacted her through the holoweb, had encouraged her to leave Hector and become a vat diver. She had, in fact, started it all, so that Helix might find her own vat. And it suddenly occurred to her that perhaps she had tried to keep Helix in her job, after the divesuit incident.

Jacinth curled her arms around Helix and nuzzled her neck. “Yes. It was ridiculous. Why should you have to wear one of those foolish suits?”

But how had she done it?

“The brains are our cousins, and they like us better than the people who think they control them. When I touch them, they do what I ask.”

Gently Helix dislodged her sisters from her body and dove down to the bottom of the vat. An agule floated by and she absently plucked it and bit into its pulpy softness. She would like to stay here forever, but this wasn’t her nest. It was Lilith’s. They had reached some temporary accord, but she could not fool herself into thinking it was a permanent arrangement. She was a queen. She needed her own nest. Through the green waters Helix saw several of her sisters swimming nonchalantly about four meters away. They were making sure she did not attempt to get into Lilith’s vat again. To reassure them Helix coasted along the wall, circling back before she was halfway to the diving platform that separated the two vats.

Of course it was the touch. Through her touch Lilith communicated more information to the brains more efficiently than any human being with a keypad ever could. She spoke their language. When she resurfaced, Helix was greeted by Orixeme, who apparently came not with a message but out of sheer curiosity. She gripped Helix and ran her nose and mouth across her skin, snuffling intently. As Helix relaxed, she loosened her grip and ran one hand across her belly. Her touch sent a bolt of recognition through Helix’s body. “Eggs,” Orixeme whispered needlessly, and swam away. Helix looked up, and saw someone in a divesuit and face mask come out of one of the offices and stand at the edge of the balcony. As she stared, he raised a hand and waved at her. None of the other Lilim seemed to pay him much mind. It couldn’t be Nathan Graham or Benny. “Dr. Martin is asking to speak with you,” he said through his suit’s radio.

Reluctantly, Helix drew herself out of the waters and padded around the balcony, flanked by a bevy of concerned Lilim who formed themselves into a barricade when she rounded the curve towards Lilith’s vat. “It’s okay,” she said, putting a hand on Magdar’s shoulder to drive her message home. “I’m going into the office.”

They trailed her curiously as she approached the suited figure. “I’m Colin Slatermeyer,” he said, “One of Dr. Martin’s assistants.”

Helix wrinkled her brow. “How did you get in here? The door doesn’t open.”

“I was here already.”

The Lilim stayed behind as she entered the office. Inside the air was horribly dry. Already she yearned to return to the waters, and Helix wondered what she would do when she had to leave here and face the waterless world again.

Hector’s face floated above the transceiver. “Helix,” he said as she came into camera range. “Are you all right? Is Lilith-Did you-”

“She’s fine, we’re both fine. But I can’t stay here. This is her nest, I need one of my own.”

“Graham probably thinks you’re both dead. It’s better if we let him.” Hector’s brow wrinkled in worry.

“Chango was here though. She’s on her way down to you, now. She can get you and Slatermeyer out.”

Helix bit back her impatience. “Out. Out but then what? Hector I need-I can’t go back to living as a human. Lilith and I have been talking. She says GeneSys is our enemy. She says we have to defeat it if we’re to continue as a species.” Helix’s stomach cramped with urgency. “You invented the brains. Lilith calls them cousins. She says they’ll help us.”

Hector shook his head. “You can’t just overthrow a whole company, Helix. Lilith doesn’t understand, but you’ve lived among humans. GeneSys is made up of thousands of people. You can’t just take it over.”

“I don’t see any other way.”

“Let me talk to Anna. She’s the CEO. I’ll just lay my cards on the table. She’s a pretty decent person. Maybe I can convince her to keep the project going, for its own sake.”

“No. We aren’t your project anymore, Hector. It’s time for us to be in the world. Tell me more about the brains. They’re all over the building, right?”

“Y-yeah. They’re in the processors the employees use for spreadsheets and analysis, and there are smaller ones in the lighting and environmental systems, and in the security cameras. Everything’s hooked up to a big brain in the attic that keeps tabs on all the systems. But-”

His objection was cut off by Slatermeyer, who had left, and now returned with someone else. A small and extremely grimy figure in a divesuit and face mask.

“Chango?” said Helix.

The figure reached up and took off the face mask. “I made it.” said Chango. “Christ, what a haul. Is there anyplace around here I can take a bath?” She ran a gloved finger over her suit and came up with a glob of slime and dust. “No telling what this stuff is.” Pointing at the door, she said, “Those women out there

— they look like you.”

Helix reached towards Chango to take her face in her hands and kiss her, but she stopped herself. The growth medium still drying on her naked skin would be more dangerous to Chango than anything she’d encountered on her way down here. She dropped her hands to her sides. “I’m glad to see you.”

“Yeah, same here. It was touch and go for awhile there, but then I found the main electrical conduit for the building. Near as I can tell, the thing runs straight up to the top of the tower.”

“To the brain,” Helix said, looking over her shoulder at Hector’s hologram.

“That would be correct,” he said, his voice thick with reluctance.

She looked back at Chango. “We have to go back up.”

Chango’s eyes bulged wide. “What?”

oOo

Slatermeyer ventured back out onto the balcony. Below him was the vat currently occupied by Lilith. Even from here he could see the pulpy blue polymer lining the walls and floor of the vat. It was a rich crop. His mind strayed to the research he’d been doing on the poly before his abduction. Its conductivity ratios and propensity for self-propagation pointed to something, some highly specific application that had continued to elude his grasp.

He looked up at the mounting where the transceiver had been, and then down again into the growth medium, where he could just barely make out a darker lump on the bottom of the vat. He walked around the balcony to the dive platform and stopped, expecting to see the tetras converging to herd him back into the office, but they didn’t seem to care anymore. Lilith and several of her brood swam around on their backs in the vat below, apparently unconcerned about his approach. Colin sat down on the dive platform, checked the seals on his suit, and carefully lowered himself into the vat. He dove down, skimming along the bottom towards the lump. It was the transceiver, alright, still attached to its armature, but it was beyond any hope of repair, coated as it was with blue polymer. Just the same, he took it with him.

In the lab Hector was still on the holo, and he and Helix and Chango were arguing.

“I almost got killed in the ventilation system, and now you want me to climb all the way back up again?”

said Chango, her hands in the air.

“If Graham catches on, he won’t hesitate to kill the other tetras,” noted Hector. Helix shook her head. “He can’t get in, he welded the door shut.”

Colin ignored them and took the transceiver over to a small area of counter space. He set it down and began methodically peeling the blue poly from its surface.

The camera itself was remarkably well preserved, but it wasn’t until he got the casing off that he discovered the real impact of the blue poly on the instrument. It had apparently leached into the transceiver’s inner works through the peripheral port. The poly coated the chips and wires. Slatermeyer took the camera to a magnifying stand and tried to peel off the poly with a tweezers, but he only succeeded in pulling a wire loose. He upped the magnification, and examined the severed wire. It was solid blue poly, all the way through its tiny diameter. He’d been wrong, the poly wasn’t coating the circuitry at all, not any more. It was the circuitry. Like a sea change, or a petrification, the blue poly had replaced the camera’s electrical components, while maintaining their structure. He pressed the ends of the severed wire back together and watched the seam disappear as the poly knitted itself together again. With trembling hands he replaced the transceiver’s casing and switched it on. The current episode of We Are the World leapt into the air before him in perfect holographic detail. Natasha was taking the witness stand, to testify in her own defense. Chango and Helix turned and stared. “I can’t believe you’re watching soaps at a time like this,” said Chango.

“She’s testifying?” said Helix, “No! I never would have let her do that. Damn.”

“What’s going on?” Hector asked.

“What’s going on,” said Slatermeyer, “is that we’ve been sitting on the biggest technological innovation since the brains, and we never even knew it. The poly-” Slatermeyer bundled the scraps from the casing into his gloved hands and rolled them into a ball. He approached the transceiver carrying Hector’s image, and held it up. “The blue poly, it-Do you realize what it would mean, if we could completely integrate the circuitry in every system, and eliminate the need for an interface between the brains and the electrical network? Processing speeds would hit the roof.”

“Well, a biological network has been discussed, Slatermeyer.” Hector shrugged. “But we rejected it because of the cost of uprooting the infrastructure.”

“That’s just it.” Slatermeyer bounced the ball of blue poly on the ground for emphasis. “We don’t have to uproot anything. We don’t have to do anything at all.”

“What are you talking about?” said Helix.

Slatermeyer faced her. “Your friend can get us out of here, can’t she?”

“Well yeah. She’s going to take me up to the top of the tower, where the main control system for the brain network is located.”

Chango sighed. “I never could talk you out of a damn thing.”

Slatermeyer squeezed the blue poly between his hands. “Fine. I’m going with you. Part way, anyway.”

He turned to face Hector again. “We’ll talk about this in person.”

oOo

“How did it go?” Graham asked Benny as soon as he stepped into the office. Benny dumped Ada’s tanks next to the desk and helped himself to a hearty portion of Graham’s liquor.

“Oh, I got Helix in there alright,” he said, sinking into a chair. “Soldered the door shut like you said, no problem.”

“Good. No one’s getting in or out of there now.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

“What now? Graham leaned across the desk towards him. He looked haggard, thought Benny. He probably wasn’t used to such late nights.

“I ran into an old chum on the way back. Chango Chichelski. She had these with her.” He hefted the tanks up to show Graham. “They’re Ada’s. She must have been to my apartment.”

“You left them there?”

“Sure. I wasn’t planning on sticking around town. That was your idea, remember?”

“What happened?”

“I was bringing her back here, but she got away.”

“She got away.”

“Yeah. There was a scuffle in this office she ran into. There were people in there, still working, at this hour. I shot somebody, but it wasn’t her. By the time I got out of there, she’d slipped away, but I have an idea where she went.”

Graham gritted his teeth. “Can you share it with the rest of the class?”

“A grating was missing from the door to the maintenance stairway. It was too small for me but I kicked the door open. Two floors up an access panel had been removed from a ventilation duct.”

“She crawled inside?”

“Yeah. You don’t know Chango. She can get in and out of places no one else would even dream of going. She could be anywhere, now.”

“Does she know what happened to Helix?”

“No, but my guess is she was on her way to see Hector Martin when I found her. If she succeeds in finding him, he can tell her.”

“Christ. And you shot someone. Who?”

“I don’t know, some suit.”

“Lovely. Would she really try to get into the vat room through the ventilation system? More importantly, could she?”

“If anyone could, it would be her.”

Graham stood up and got himself a drink. “What would my mother say?” he muttered softly.

“Don’t you think, what with me shooting someone, with witnesses and everything, that it’s time I should be leaving?”

“We have to stop her.”

“Why? She has no evidence anymore.” He gestured to the tanks. “And so what if she does get into the vat room. They’ll be dead by then right?”

“The two queens, yes. There are others, but I don’t think they can do much without their — uh —

mother.”

“Then what are you worrying about? Just notify security and they can catch her when she comes out.”

“It isn’t good. Too many loose ends. She may already be in contact with Martin. Together the two of them, tanks or no tanks, can make considerable trouble for us.”

“For you. I’ll be long gone.”

“Not without money for a plane ticket.”

“Oh come on. You’ve got to let me go. I’m not going crawling around in any ventilation ducts, I’ll tell you that right now. If you’re so hot on the idea, you do it.”

“You won’t have to. I’ll call up a schema of the building’s systems. Then all we have to do is figure out where she has to go to get down there, and intercept her.”

Benny hissed through his teeth. “It’s not going to be that easy, and you know it. You’re just trying to snow me. Maybe I can’t get out of town without your money, but you need me too. Besides, Martin’s your real problem. As long as he’s around, you’ll never squeak out of this.”