Playing God (47 page)

Arron waited for a security lockout, the alarm, at least a validity question from the AI, but none came. The station cycled through the addresses, and he waited, his heartbeat slowing down each second nothing unusual happened. Apparently the higher-ups at Bioverse couldn't conceive why anybody would want to call the ship, and their security chief had been too busy to think of it for them.

“Request completed,” said the room voice, although the screen was still blank. “Audio only available.”

Arron's heart rose into his throat. “This is Scholar Arron to the city-ship
Ur.
I am seeking Dayisen Rual Lareet and Dayisen Rual Umat. Can they be found to speak with me?”

He strained his ears for some reply out of the dark screen. Instead, he heard the door swish open at his back.

“What are you doing!” shouted Lynn.

“Room voice, close connection.” Arron turned around to face her. Her bandages were gone, but the new skin shone a little too pink and a little too fresh, giving her a strangely patchwork appearance. “I'm trying to talk to my sisters…” he began calmly.

“Your sisters!” Rage distorted her face.

Lynn, what's happened to you?
“Dayisen Lareet and Dayisen Umat. They've hosted me for my entire time here, and I've always thought of them as my sisters.”

Lynn ran her hand across the stubble on her scalp. “Did you ever ask them what
they
thought?”

He felt real anger flash through him. “If I didn't, I was just imitating you.”

Lynn's face flushed scarlet. She took one step toward him.

At that moment, the room voice cut through the air. “Dr. Nussbaumer, an urgent call from Praeis Shin t'Theria waiting for you.”

Lynn closed her mouth so hard, Arron heard her teeth click together. “We aren't finished,” she said as she faced the comm station. It was only when she turned her back that Arron realized he had no idea what she was doing here, or how she got in. She must have had the call thread to the
Ur
spliced. Was she looking for anyone calling the
Ur,
or just him? He couldn't be sure. For all he could tell, she had forgotten his existence.

“Activate the station. I'm here, Praeis.” She did not sit down, she just folded her arms across her chest.

Watching over her shoulder, Arron saw the screen flicker to life. There was Praeis Shin front and center, but Praeis was wearing a filter mask over her nose and mouth. A thick rubber suit covered her torso. He peered past her at the shadowy background and realized with a start she must be at his old outpost, talking on the last remaining comm station.

“Lynn. Thank you for taking this. I can't stay where I am for long. It's not exactly secure here.” The filter mask muffled Praeis's voice, but Arron could still hear the strain in it. Her ears were tilted back and quivering with stress. “It's the only station I could get to. Lynn, what's going on? I appreciate your people are keeping us safe, but we're being fed some story about accidents and pollution congealers.”

Lynn's color had dropped somewhere close to normal. “Praeis, I swear, it's true. It was an accident,” she said without any hesitation. Arron felt his stomach clench.
How could you do this? Lynn, do you even know what you're doing?
“The bioengineers have been storing their gunk up all over the planet waiting for the time to let it loose. We didn't know—”

“You didn't know we'd go to war,” Praeis finished for her. “Of course not. You thought you had us all managed, didn't you?” She waggled her ears to say she was teasing, but there was an edge to her voice that grated across the back of Arron's mind. “I've been called back to t'Aori to explain the situation to the Queens.”

“I can send you down maps and diagrams of the other caches,” said Lynn, as if only anxious to be helpful. “Or you can have them call up here anytime.”

“Thank you.” Praeis dipped her ears. “But I can handle this much.”

“Have I ever doubted how much you can handle, Praeis?” Lynn's voice softened, and even Arron was ready to swear she meant it.

There was a pause, and Arron saw Lynn's pleasant smile flicker. “Of course not,” said Praeis. “I've got to go before I breathe in too much poison.”

“Call up, soon, Praeis. Let me know how you and Theia are doing.”

“I will.” Praeis cut the connection.

Before the screen had completely blanked, Lynn turned back to Arron. He stared at her. He knew he was staring, but he couldn't help it. His hands had gone cold. Who was this woman? This was not Lynn. It couldn't be.

He gestured weakly toward the comm station. “I cannot believe you did that.”

She rubbed her eyes with her fingertips. “Look, Arron, I do not want to argue about this. I'm…”

He took two steps toward her. He was too close for Human politeness, but he didn't care. She did not step back. “You're sitting up here deciding the fate of the Dedelphi. You're planning out their every move and correcting them when they go wrong. Why don't you just get yourself a throne and a beard, declare yourself God, and finish it!”

“I am saving lives,” said Lynn in a tightly controlled voice. She stayed where she was, and Arron found he had to step back from her.

“You're running lives, Lynn!” He paced around the comm station chair. “You wouldn't even tell Praeis what you're doing!”

“Of course I didn't tell her! I…”

“You what?” asked Arron softly. “You didn't want her to know how far it's gone?” He grabbed the back of the chair with both hands. “You didn't want her to tell some of
her
sisters what was going on in case they'd rebel against you?” Her eyes glowed dangerously. Arron leaned toward her.
Don't you see it, Lynn? Listen to me, I'm just trying to make you see!
“They scared you, Lynn, admit it. You found a situation you couldn't manage, and you got scared. Now you're determined to make the whole planet behave like you want, so you don't have to be afraid of it anymore.”

“If we don't do something, they are all going to die,” she said, enunciating each word carefully. “I am not going to kill them. Are you? Are you going to say they're all better off dead?”

“No, of course not.” Arron ran both hands across his stubbly scalp.
Why can't you hear me?
“All I am saying, all I have ever said, is that they need to make their own decisions!”

“They did, Arron!” Lynn slammed her hand down on the comm-station keyboard. “They decided to bring us here!”

“But not for this!” He flung out both hands.

Lynn's teeth bared, just like a Dedelphi's. “Yes, for this! Exactly for this! They asked us to save them, and we're going to!”

Arron leaned over the chair. “Lynn, the corp isn't interested in saving them. The corp is interested in—”

“Spare me, Arron.” Lynn held up both hands and waved him back. “They're not dealing with the corp now. They're dealing with me.”

Arron stared, stunned. She believed it. She really believed Bioverse had just stepped aside and left everything in her hands.

“Well”—he swallowed hard—”I guess it's all right then.”

“No, it isn't.” She shook her head. Her shoulders slumped. For a moment, Arron saw how tired she was, but she rallied and pulled herself up straight again. “It's not all right, but it will be. Don't try to call them again, Arron. Things are too… delicate. We just can't let you in there; we don't know what will happen.”

She left. The door swished shut behind her. Arron stayed where he was, wondering what else he could have said, what else he could have done. Was she really too far gone for him to reach anymore? Had she been that badly scared?

Had he really lost her, too?

Lareet woke to the sound of sisters screaming.

She shot bolt upright on the mattress. Umat was already at the window. Around them, dayisen, trindt and irat sat up and twisted their ears around, trying to make sense of the sound.

“What is it?” asked Lareet. As she spoke, a thick smell reached her. It was like mildew and rotting fungus. Her nostrils pinched themselves closed.

“Something's happened to the river.” Umat ran for the stairs.

Lareet jumped up and snatched a tunic from off the clothes chest as she pelted after her sister. She shrugged into it somewhere between the foot of the stairs and the open door and headed across the lawn to stand beside Umat.

Naked as a fisher in the rain, Umat dug her toes into the grassy riverbank near a cluster of sisters. The dawn was just starting, and the dome was turning light blue, but there was already plenty of light by which to see what had happened.

The river, the beautiful, clear, sparkling river, was now thick with brown sludge. It bubbled and swirled like the worst contents of an open sewer. It was the source of the smell that permeated the air. Dead fish rocked on the surface like toy boats.

Umat stared. Her mouth opened, but it was a moment before any sound could come out. “Mother Night,” she whispered. Then, she collected herself. “Ovrth Ond, Ovrth Brindt, get to the command center, tell them to get a team down to the water recyclers immediately to try to find out what's happened. Trindt Mnat, take some sisters and see if all the tap water is the same way.”

Something brushed Lareet's shoulder. She swatted at it angrily. A yellow leaf drifted down to the grass under her feet.

Yellow?
She looked up. Another leaf swirled down from the tree she stood under. The strengthening light showed her that the green foliage was heavily speckled with unhealthy yellow blotches. Small drifts of dead leaves lay piled on the grass. Lareet looked closer. The grass was yellowing, too. In places, pale, blobby mushrooms studded the ground.

“Umat”—she straightened up—“we will need to check the gardens as well.”

The news, when it came to the command center, was not good. All the water was affected, on both sides of the ship. A little potable liquid could be created by a slow process of repeated boiling and filtration. No one had to point out that without sterile water, all the medical experiments would grind to a halt, but Lareet saw the faces of the irat who came in to report. They were all thinking about it.

The fungus that was taking over the lawns and strangling the trees had indeed gotten into the gardens. They were now havens for corpse grey mushrooms that split open with the stench of methane and scattered clouds of brown spores everywhere.

Their city. Their beautiful, lovingly made city was rotting around them.

“We can do without the gardens, if we have to,” said Umat, her ears flicking back and forth. “We can eat the artificial rations the Humans left. It's the water.”

“It's other things as well, Sister,” said Lareet gravely. “Have you smelled the air in the cities? The stench is getting stronger. It's going to be unbreathable very shortly. If we cannot get the filtration system going, we will be forced into pressure suits and clean-suits.” She paused and decided she did not need to add that there were not enough for the entire complement aboard.

“We could load the extra personnel into shuttles and send them back home.” The shuttles’ computers hadn't been sabotaged. The autopilots had assured their best flyers they could get back to the Hundred Isles, even at the acceleration and trajectory that would be reached when the ship was moving full tilt.

If only we could teach the city-ship to be so cooperative.
Lareet shook her head. “Dayisen Umat, if we send anyone out now, they'll be picked up by the Humans, or the Parliament. If anything goes wrong, they'll be exiled, or killed. We still need to wait.”
We need to wait until we are sure this will work. Until we know our sisters will go home heroes. So I can stand beside you as long as possible and breathe you all the way into my womb for our daughters to remember.

“How did they do it?” Umat flung her arms out.

Lareet frowned down the tunnel. Where there had once been green grass, there were now sickly brown mushrooms. “Some of those
jobbers
must have carried spores. The rest of the attack was probably a diversion.”

Umat turned eyes and ears toward her. “Then we are once again out of time.”

Lareet dipped her ears silently.

Umat faced the coders. “Can we move the ship yet?”

“We can move it,” said Dayisen Ksenth. The head of the coders’ dawn shift looked down at the miles of broad paper ribbon lying curled on the central table. “We can start the engines anytime we need to—”

Umat cut her off with uncharacteristic impatience. “Can we move it where we want it?”

Dayisen Ksenth's ears crumbled. “That's still theoretical.”

Lareet touched her sister's arm. Umat's skin rippled, but she gave no other sign of noticing Lareet. “How much less theoretical will another two days make it?” Umat asked.

“Not much,” the dayisen admitted. “We unfortunately do not have the luxury of a test flight.”

Lareet felt the uncertainty ripple through her sister, and her own skin bunched up in answer. “It was always a risk, Sister,” Umat said, as if they were alone. “I think the Humans did this to discomfort us. What will they do when they really want to root us out?”

Lareet lowered both eyes and ears. She already knew what Umat was going to say next, and she could not think of one valid reason to prevent her.

“Give the orders to the engine room, Dayisen Ksenth,” Umat said in a calm, level voice. “We are moving now.”

Chapter XIX

C
ommander Keale sat at the conference table in his office with Captain Esmaraude. A 3-D of the
Ur
hung on the video wall between them.

“Start with the engines to be safe.” Esmo spoke each word as if it hurt. Keale was sure it did. The
Ur
was her ship, and here they were talking calmly about dismantling it.

“It wouldn't be that safe,” countered Keale. “One blast out the back jets and the crane ship will be a floating heap of slag.”

“Not if the crane goes straight in.” She tapped the hangarbay doors. “And gets straight to work. It'll take the pogos a minute to figure out what's going on, and I guarantee you they're not going to be turning the jets on quickly. If we warn the crane's crew what to expect, they'll be able to get the ship well out of the way of any blast.” She frowned. “Cranes steer like pigs, but they're a lot faster than city-ships.”