Accidental Creatures (24 page)

“I wanted to see for myself, and I’m glad I did. Lilith calls herself the enemy of GeneSys. The tetras have no intention of cooperating with the goals of the project. Even before they drove you out of the vat room, you had to know that. Why did you continue? Why did you harbor that little queen? Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?”

Hector glared at him and gripped the arms of his chair. “I didn’t tell you because you would have canceled the project. Do you have any idea what an accomplishment the tetras are? Higher intelligence functions, language ability, even social organization. And they’re self propagating. It’s a new species, one with features that I haven’t even discovered yet.

“I know what you think of me. That my peak is behind me, with the brains, but you’re wrong. This is it. This is what my life and my career have been for.”

“You’re mad. Take a look outside your tower, Doctor.” Graham gestured towards the window. “We don’t need more people. We don’t have work for the ones already out there. Those creatures of yours can talk and think and fondle each other till the day is night, but it doesn’t give them rights. It doesn’t make them anything but what they are; inconvenient.

“You made them too much like people, Martin. In order to make a place for themselves, they’ll have to displace human beings, and no one’s going to step aside voluntarily. Ever heard of the twentieth century?

Genocide is a very common human strategy. Some say it started all the way back with the sudden demise of the Neanderthals. Given that kind of track record, do you really think a new species with human traits has a chance?”

Hector smiled thinly and raised his shoulders. “Maybe they’re like weeds and not so easily wiped out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Come here.” Graham gripped Hector by the shoulder and propelled him towards the windows. “Looky there,” he pointed towards Vattown. Hector could just make out the distant strobing of police flashers. “There’s your proof. That little queen of yours is down there, and they’re beating her to death.”

Hector shook. He pulled away from Graham’s grip and turned to face him. “How do you know that?”

Graham eyed him blandly. “Because I arranged it.”

“What? You can’t do that!”

Graham laughed. “You have no idea what I can do. They were going to strike anyway. It doesn’t take much to turn that crowd into a mob.”

“You’ve got to stop them.” Hector lunged forward, grabbed the transceiver from Graham’s belt loop and shoved it at him. “Now! Call them! Call it off!”

Graham’s response was preempted by the insistent bleeping of the transceiver signal. Without thinking Hector switched it to receive. “Yes?” he said, in his best imitation of Graham’s rough tenor. There was no holo. Only a voice. “It’s me. We lost her,” it said.

Hector stared at Graham with glee. “Forget it. There’s a change in plans.” he said.

“Give me that!” yelled Graham, body checking Hector and grabbing for the transceiver. They fell to the floor, Hector grunting as Graham rolled over him. The transceiver was wrested from his grasp and Graham stood up, brushing his suit. “I’ll call you back,” he muttered tersely at the transceiver and switched it off.

Hector stood and backed towards the door. Graham approached him with his right hand balled in a fist. Before he could close the distance and sock him, Hector turned and ran out the door. Breathing heavily, Hector made his way to the elevators. He had a rug burn on his cheek from wrestling with Graham. All to the good, he thought, as he entered the elevator and pressed the button for floor 29

— Anna’s office.

“I didn’t believe, still don’t believe, that you should be diving, but what happened down there today, that wasn’t what I wanted either. I wanted a real strike, with real demands, not just your dismissal but other, more important things like safety standards and better wages. Those fucking assholes, turning themselves into a mob. Don’t they realize that they’ve destroyed any chance for their demands to be taken seriously?

Why? Why must this movement always be dogged by shame?” Vonda put her head in her hands and shook it. She was sitting on Orielle’s couch.

At the far end of the room, Chango crossed and uncrossed her arms. Bitter words were collecting in her mouth. Sooner or later she was going to open it and they’d come out. “If you hadn’t all decided that Ada was blasted when she dove, there wouldn’t be any shame,” she finally blurted. Vonda looked at her wearily. “Oh God, Chango. You’re like a dog with a bone. Ada’s dead, it doesn’t matter why.”

“Doesn’t matter? You don’t think so? You just said it yourself, the shame. It doesn’t belong to her, it-”

“It doesn’t belong to me either!” Vonda suddenly stood upright and shouted. “I swear to you on the friendship we once had, I did not doctor her lab results. I did not! Except for you there probably wasn’t anyone more upset about those results than I was. How do you think I felt, being the messenger of that kind of news? Fucking-a, Chango, I knew Ada too...” Vonda paced the floor. “And to tell you the truth,” she said, “I’ve never been able to believe it myself.”

Chango stared at her, “Really? Then who-”

“Nobody! I took the samples from her and ran the tests. No one else touched them. Chango, she was gassed when she dove, but-”

“Management would have done anything to get her out of their hair. Maybe someone tampered with her tanks.”

“That’s impossible. Benny filled and checked them, just like he always did. All I know is this ancient history shit isn’t going to get us anywhere now. You ought to be thinking about your friend,” she nodded at Helix, who was sitting in a chair, holding a bag of ice to the side of her face. “What are you going to do about her?”

“She needs a vat,” said Chango.

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” said Helix, “but there it is. If I don’t find a vat soon, one I can stay in, I’m going to die.”

There was a long pause in the conversation, and then Vonda spoke, her voice a pitch higher, “You’re not human at all, are you?”

Helix shook her head, “I guess not.”

Vonda stood by the television set, a reefer cigarette in her mouth and a thoughtful expression on her face.

“Word was your father worked for GeneSys, a researcher. Never did get his name,” she said.

“H-Hector Martin,” said Helix.

“Hector Martin. Dr. Hector Martin. The inventor of the multi-processor brains. I always knew there was something weird about you.”

Helix stood up and walked towards her, her arms spread wide, “Oh really?”

Vonda squinted and exhaled a plume of smoke. “It makes sense now. That’s why they didn’t fire you. The test was a success.”

“Stop,” said Chango.

Vonda shook her head, still staring as Helix slowly approached her. “I was so busy hating you because you were Chango’s squeeze, I neglected the obvious. The rest of them out there today, they knew. Or at least as a mob they knew. They didn’t want you dead for being a sport, or even for taking your suit off in the vat and surviving. They wanted you dead because your very existence is a threat to them. To all of us.”

Helix stood inches from Vonda. She reached forward and braced her arms against the wall so that they surrounded Vonda like fleshly prison bars. “What then, are you going to do about it?” she asked in a low tone.

Vonda’s eyes were wide, and she shook a little. “Remember,” she muttered, “you’re dealing with an individual here, not the species.”

“Yeah? Well it sounds to me like you’re speaking for your species.”

Vonda stepped away from the wall, forcing Helix back with her body. “Human beings need those jobs, Helix. And if GeneSys is trying to create some kind of fabricated slave labor force, then is that really what you want?”

“I just want a vat.” Helix’s arms hung at her sides now, useless.

“Well you’re not going to get one in Vattown. You can forget it. Why don’t you go back to your maker?

Maybe he can help you.”

“Why don’t you go to hell?” Helix stepped towards Vonda again, baring her teeth.

“Fine, fuck you.” Vonda pushed Helix away from her with both hands. “I’m just trying to help.”

“You just want to make me disappear. Like the rest of them.”

“Oh you are so full of shit.”

“Oh yeah?” Helix pushed Vonda back into the wall again. “Then why are you afraid of me?”

Vonda stared at her stonily. “Back off, miss thing, I’m warning you.”

“No! What if I don’t want to back off?”

Helix reeled suddenly as Vonda’s right fist connected with her jaw. She shook her head, flexed her knees, and sprang on Vonda, knocking her to the floor. The two of them rolled over one another, kicking and scrabbling for handholds. Helix got hold of Vonda’s arms, pinning her to the floor.

“Stop it!” Chango hauled on Helix’s shoulder, tearing her away from Vonda by sheer force of will.

“What’s the matter with you?” she yelled. “Aren’t you in enough trouble already? She saved your life today! And what she says is true. You’ll never get back into the vats. They’ll never let you. All you’ll do is get killed like you almost were today.”

Helix turned her back and walked to the window. She looked out of it, out across the Eastern Market with its colorful stalls to the tower that stood in the distance. It was a faded green in the haze of the sky, like a towering ghost. She stared at it, and tried very hard not to think about anything Vonda had said. A wave of itching crept over her, her skin crawling at the thought of not having a vat. They thought they could stop her; the mob and Vonda, even Chango in her own way. They thought she could just get over it, or just go away, or just be beaten. They didn’t know. They didn’t know about the hand that pushed her, they didn’t know it was a thing greater than herself. They thought they knew what she was.

The time she had wasted, trying to be a human being, trying to get along with human beings. Madness. Madness born of memory, the terror of the playground and her determination to avoid it at any cost. But she could not. The community of humans was the playground. That was all it could ever be, not because of human nature, but because of her own.

Helix looked down at the street fronting Orielle’s loft. Someone was approaching. It was Benny.

“I believe we have a visitor,” said a silken voice behind her. Helix turned to see Orielle making an entrance from her gauze shrouded bed chamber at the back of the loft. “The security holo tells me your esteemed colleague, Benjamin, has chosen to grace us with his presence. I believe he’ll be ringing the bell right about-” She was interrupted by a soft chime. “Now.” She smiled. One of Orielle’s body guards emerged from the bed chamber and went downstairs to answer the door. Benny came up, looking like someone had smashed him in the face with a rock. “Thank God you’re alright,” he said, looking at Helix.

“What happened to you?” Chango asked.

He waved off her concern, shaking his head. “Pauly didn’t take kindly to my heading him off. After that, it turned into a police brawl.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t get arrested,” said Vonda, sitting stiffly on the couch. Her eyes kept flickering over to Helix, making sure she kept her distance.

Benny nodded, thoughtfully holding a hand to his bleeding lip. “I know.”

“However did you guess that your friends were here?” asked Orielle.

“I knew once they broke free of the mob they’d get out of Vattown. You like Helix, and you have the power to defend her.”

“Yes,” Orielle inclined her chin, and spread her arms. “But she cannot stay here forever.”

“I was just trying to tell her she should go back to GeneSys, but she jumped all over my case,” said Vonda. “Orielle’s right, sooner or later the divers will figure out that she’s here.”

“Nonsense,” said Orielle, “As long as she stays out of the picture, they’ll quickly forget about her. That’s not what I meant. That girl needs to be surrounded by a large quantity of growth medium. She needs a vat.”

Chango stared at her. “We can bring it here,” she said. We can make a tank for her.”

“What do you think this is, Sea World? No. Escorting her to safety at the bar was one thing, taking her in today was another, but installing her as a permanent member of my household, that’s one too many.”

Benny sank onto the couch. “There may be another way.” He looked at Chango. “Remember those courses Ada took? Over at Mercy College?”

“In the biopoly department. They had a research center there.”

“Yeah. The project was underwritten by GeneSys, and when the college folded, they kept it running for awhile.”

“Until they could hire everyone they wanted into their own research department,” said Chango. “They closed it a few years ago.”

“True. But the vats will still be there.”

oOo

Hector strode through the glass doors of Anna’s office and brushed past her secretary. “Excuse me!

Sir!” she cried in his wake, “Do you have an appointment?”

He glanced over his shoulder as he opened the door to Anna’s private office. “Now I do.”

Anna didn’t have a desk. She reclined on a black vat leather chaise, gazing up at a holographic stock analysis graph. She glanced over and sat up as he came in the door. “Dr. Martin!” Her fingers strayed to a small keypad on her wrist and the graph dissolved. She looked at him quizzically. This was it, time for his performance. “I can’t work under these conditions! You have no idea what it’s like. That — that man! He’s out of control. Look!” Hector pointed at his cheek, “He hit me!” his voice went up an octave in an appropriately whiny squeal.

Still staring at him, Anna crossed fluidly to a low matte black table covered with magazines and toys. “Sit down, Dr. Martin.” she gestured to a boxy black couch beside it. “Can I get you a glass of water?”

“Yes, that would be wonderful. Thank you.” Hector sank onto the couch and relished the moment, as the CEO of GeneSys fetched him a glass of water. He should have done this a long time ago, he thought. Anna returned, holding out the glass of water in a perfectly manicured hand. She folded herself into a chair to his right and watched him drink. “Feel better?” she asked when he drained the glass and set it between his feet.