Playing God (11 page)

The outpost was a service station for the indigent Human population of the Hundred Isles. Corpers and embassites had their amenities provided for them. Over the years, the leftovers—freelancers, curiosity traders, and academics on thread-thin grants, like Arron—had banded together and set up their own sites.

Arron walked down the path they had cleared when the outpost bunker was built. Like the dock, it was getting moss-grown. Riotous orange fungi sprouted on the moss's back.

Time to call a cleanup day,
thought Arron automatically. Then, he winced at the thought of his colleagues saying, “Why bother?”

A set of sponge-cement stairs led down into the heart of the island. The micropores in the cement's cell structure siphoned off the water and kept the stairs clean and dry. At the bottom waited a thick metal door that always made Arron think of the entrance to some ancient dungeon.

He stood in front of the door's mirror, and said, “Outpost entry for Arron Hagopian.” There was a brief hum while he was scanned. The door cycled open with a huge
whomp!
of air from the ventilator's indraft.

Arron stepped into the foyer. It was a locker room with packages of fresh clean-suits and recyclers for the used ones, along with cubicles for changing and showering. The sign over the inner door read STRIP, FRIEND, AND ENTER.

Arron pulled a clean set of clothing out of his locker, stepped into one of the shower stalls, and unsealed his helmet with a feeling of relief. He stripped off his gloves, shirt, and trousers and tossed them into a pile. He disconnected what the suit-makers euphemistically called the “relief options,” the one portion of the clean-suit he'd never really gotten used to, and dropped those into a separate pile. Then, he began the wiggling shuffle needed to peel off the skintight layer of transparent organic that covered him from neck to toe. The organic had another day's worth of use in it, but he did not want to have to soak and scrub it to clean off the stains, so he dropped that in a pile with the other used clothing.

After a long, steaming hot shower he began to feel mostly restored. He dressed in clean shorts and a blue jersey. The helmet and relief options went into the sterilizers, the used clothing into a separator, and the suit and gloves into the recycler.

When he approached, the inner door slid up slowly so as to displace a minimum amount of air and any dust particles that might have escaped the powerful vents.

The outpost's main room was an open, Getesaph-style chamber. Its plaster walls needed scrubbing. Secondhand tables, chairs, and comm stations had been scattered around it. A pair of blocky foodstores sat across from the door. A few short halls led to work alcoves that could be closed off for privacy. Some Humans got tired of the endless communality of the world around them and just needed a place to sit and be alone for a while.

“Arron! How's life in politics?”

Cabal was one of the room's three occupants. He was a lean, copper-skinned man who managed to slouch in every chair he sat in, no matter how contoured it was. The other two were Rath and Regina, both short, round, sienna-colored women. They were also both anthropology students getting in some work in the xeno-field. Arron suspected they were also lovers, but had never felt the need to ask. They waved absently to Arron as he plunked his portable down on an empty chair, then bent back to studying whatever graphic the table laid out between them.

“Today, life in politics is bad.” Arron headed for the food-stores, “I spent my morning at a blast site. Couple of buildings went up right in the heart of the Handworks quarter.”

“We heard it go,” said Rath. “Didn't rattle us here though.” She stopped herself. “God, when did a bomb blast less than two kilometers away become passÉ?”

“Just shows you're becoming like the rest of us, Rathillvna.” Cabal raised a pouch of bubbly, brown liquid to her. “Hard as diamond and mad down to your little toenails.”

Arron shook his head and lifted the lid on one of the food-stores. Cabal was an antiquarian. He sold Terran ephemera to the locals, everything from books and beverages to honest-to-God antiques like watches and furniture.

“So you say,” said Rath amiably. “Hey, Arron, you've got a hywrite waiting for you.”

The university?
Arron straightened up with a bottle of water in one hand and two packs of ration bars in the other. His expression must have looked stunned, because Rath frowned at him.

“We all got one.” Rath hit a key on the table's edge and froze the graphic. Arron saw it was a video of a group of ty Porath demonstrating one of their massive trawling nets. “They're from various departments of Bioverse. Basically, it says this is our world now and you've been declared useless. Ship offworld or be shipped. You've got two months.”

“No, I got that one already.” Arron shook his head. Then he thought of something else. “Hey, Cabal, are you planning a trip to t'Theria before the push-out? I could use a lift.” Cabal had a small converted trawler that he used to sail from one port to another, arranging buyers. He could have gotten a plane, he said, but boats inspired fewer random shootings from nervous islanders.

Cabal raised his brows. “You? Heading for t'Theria? I thought you were strictly a Getesaph native.”

Arron ignored that last. “I need to meet somebody coming in with the corpers.”

“My God.” Regina leaned back. “Don't tell me you've got a Human friend?”

Arron smiled indulgently and popped the cap on the water. “Yeah, actually, I do.” He swigged some water down. “I met her at college…”

Rath's brow wrinkled in surprise. “You actually went to college? As in left your enclave and lived at a university?”

Arron smiled crookedly. “Didn't realize I had such a stable psych outlay, did you?”

Rath shrugged. “I wouldn't trust you in the same building as my sister.”

Cabal snorted. “So, this friend you made during this grand experience of living at a college instead of getting your degree off the wire like a normal person, is coming in with the corpers. And?” He made a “come-on” gesture with his free hand.

“And”—Arron mimicked his gesture—“she wants to pick my brains.”

Cabal whistled.
“You
are going to consort with the enemy?”

Arron sighed. “Actually, I'm running an errand for the Dayisen Rual. They want the relocation schedule updated. Somebody didn't think that the Getesaph might be worried about being left on the ground while the t'Theria are up above them.” He shook his head. “But I might talk to her about stuff, yeah. Things might be better if someone in the corp knew how complicated the situation here really is.”

Regina looked at Rath. “What he means is, maybe he can convince them it's not worm it and they'll turn around and go home.”

Rath smiled grimly. “Not a chance, Arron. They've been promised new gene combos. Once the corpers get the scent, there's no calling them off.” She blew out a sigh. “And I almost had my dissertation topic sorted out.”

“Yeah, you've only been saying that for three years,” muttered Regina. Rath glared at her, and Regina patted her hand. “ ’Sokay. We'll find another world to dissect.” Arron had a feeling she was carefully not looking at him.

Cabal broke the silence. “It wouldn't hurt me to make one more run out there. Meet me here at high tide in two days, and we'll head out, okay?”

“Okay, thanks.” Arron transferred his ration packs to the hand holding the water bottle and picked up the portable. “Now, if you all will excuse me, I have some personal business to attend to.” He bowed to the assembly and retreated into one of the work alcoves.

He slid the door shut behind him, cutting off the flow of banter from the main room. The alcove contained a chair, a comm station, a table, and a bunk. He set his portable on the table and jacked it into the comm station.

Arron slid into the station's chair and dropped his stuff on the table. “Station. This is Arron Hagopian. Identify and open mail.” The one thing he missed out here was being able to follow the live threads. Without a full sat-net to handle the transactions, he had to receive the conversations as mail dumps and upload his responses.

Arron tore open a pack of bars and munched on one of the crispy oblongs that was supposed to taste like fried rice but didn't. The station beeped and whirred. The outpost account didn't have quite enough for a fully interactive AI, but they were saving for it.
We had been saving for it,
Arron corrected himself.
Now we are arguing about how to divide up the outpost's assets.

The station blurted out a canned message. “Arron Hagopian identified. Sixty-five conversation holders have new data. One hywrite received. Displaying titles.”

The screen lit up with amber lines of text. Arron skimmed them. Regarding Exploitation of Dedelph and the Dedelphi. Bioverse Feeding on Sisters’ Fear, that one actually had a Dedelphi author from the Mars colonies. Bioverse Saves Lives. There were several similar titles. He didn't see the names for any new architects. The discussion just didn't seem to be expanding any. The calls for inquiries and boycotts weren't getting anywhere. They certainly weren't hurting Bioverse.

Arron suddenly realized that he was really looking for a conversation started by Lynn. He wanted some hint as to where she stood. He wanted to know what she saw that led her to believe the evacuation of the Dedelphi was a good idea.

I want to be ready for her.
Arron stared at the alcove's curving white walls.
Rath pinned it. I want to be able to tell her she's wrong.

Arron scrubbed at his face, as if trying to wipe something sticky off his skin.

At the very bottom of the list was the address for Professor Marcus Avenall at the University of the East.

Arron drank some more water, trying to swallow his tension at the same time.

“Station, open hywrite from Professor Marcus Avenall.”

Several lines of plain text formed on the screen. Marcus had always been a minimalist.

Arron:

We talked to Bioverse. They say they've barely got enough room for the Dedelphi and support staff. The only way you're going to be allowed to stay with the evacuees is if we pay the cost of maintaining you on one of the ships for the duration.

Putting it bluntly, Arron, the university can't afford that.

You've done amazing work. Come home, and we'll be delighted to find you a new project.

Arron slumped back.
Well, that's that. Home again, home again, riggity-jig.

Anger surged through him. He hurled the water bottle at the wall. Plastic hit plaster with a thud and dropped to the floor. Liquid splattered across the wall and spilled onto the floor tiles, which drank it in thirstily.

He dropped his head into his hands and ran them back and forth across his scalp.

It wasn't just him. It wasn't that he'd fallen in love with the world and its people, which he had, he admitted it. It was that something unprecedented was happening here and nobody,
nobody
understood that Bioverse was about to shatter it to pieces.

And nobody cared.

An idea touched the back of his mind. He sat up straight again. “Station. Download and replay file Hresh from Arron Hagopian's portable jacked into your number three port.”

“Loading. Replay.”

It was a full media blitz file. One of the few he'd ever created that wasn't for grant money. It was from his first trip out into the field. He'd been assigned to a world called Hresh. Humans, in the form of the Avitrol Corp, had found the world seventy-five years before Arron arrived. Avitrol was a life-miner. They went out looking for new organic molecules that could be pressed into service as nanotech. Such things were rare, but incredibly valuable.

The Hreshi were shambling, gold-pelted people whose idea of nanotech was a well-ripened cheese. Avitrol offered them luxury goods, automated services, and the skills to use them. All they asked in return was the run of the planet and the right to keep whatever useful things they found.

When Arron got there to study a people he was physically incapable of talking to, huge segments of their world had been razed. First, Avitrol hauled up plants and insects by the freighter-load to test and retest. Then, the Hreshi themselves mined and drilled for fuels and raw materials for their new manufacturing needs. The people, dazed and distracted by their new wealth and able to travel farther and faster than ever, were warring with one another over ideals and land use. The gouging of their ecosphere unleashed disease that their medical sciences, which Avitrol had forgotten to augment with their luxury-goods market, had no way to control.

Arron had stood horrified at the sight of so many dead and dying while his site supervisor lectured about what a great thing it was to find a race in transition like this. Furious, he'd built the blitz file and tried to knot it into the web, only to be informed by the university that if his name was found connected to its release, he could find other employment.

So, he'd kept it under wraps. He'd tied other more staid and strictly factual knots. With the help of thousands of other voices, the webbed enclaves had rallied. Avitrol was shunned and had to make reparations to the Hresh.

Now, as he watched the horrors he'd recorded, Arron wondered if the blitz could be reworked. He could weave parallels between Avitrol's life-mining of the Hreshi and Bioverse's working over of the Dedelphi. He could do it. His career at the university would be over, but if he could get the word out about what was happening here, if he could give back just a portion of the life and hospitality the Getesaph had shown him, it would be worth it.

He'd need to set down a core idea to give the rest of the presentation something to wrap around. Take a page from Marcus and minimalize it. A text block, maybe with music in the background, but make it something they'd have to pay attention to.

“Station, prepare media-tool workspace for a new thread. Clear space for text input. Convert voice input to text.

Arron bent over the keyboard and set to work.

Parliament Hall was never quite empty. Soldiers patrolled its gates and stood beside its doors, guarding the Members and their staff who worked through the night. The wide, polished-stone rooms were lit if dimly, by electricity all night long. Lareet had never lost her love of the beauty of the place. Layers of round wooden terraces rose from the floor like uneven stacks of coins. Tiled pools held island conference spaces in their center, fountains and waterfalls that filled every crevice with music.