Accidental Creatures (5 page)

“Fuck,” someone was screaming, she wasn't sure who, “Let's go.” She heard footsteps running away, caught a glimpse of their backs as the three of them fled, one limping, one bleeding. She was bleeding too. In fact, she didn't feel well at all, she thought, as she sank to the ground. She didn't pass out, but only lay there, her face against the dirty cloncrete, staring at a trodden gum wrapper. She should get out of here, she thought, but when she tried to move, everything, and especially that bleeding spot in the small of her back, hurt. She put her hand to it. It didn't seem very big, to be producing so much blood. She tried to keep a hand over it, pressing, to stop the flow, but she kept forgetting. All of this reminded her of something, some other time when she'd lain, beaten, on the ground. What had she done then? When? On that regrettable day at the orphanage. But Hector had rescued her from that place, and now she'd left him.

Footsteps, just one set, approached slowly. She tried to turn and look but pain lanced up her spine and she subsided, closing her eyes. Whoever it was would come, search for a wallet or something valuable, and hopefully leave her alone.

The footsteps stopped, and she felt a hand on her upper right arm. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

“I'll call an ambulance.”

“No!” she shouted, which made her head hurt. “No doctors, please. I'm all right. I'll be fine. I just need to rest a little, okay? Please, please, just leave me alone.”

“But you've been stabbed, possibly in the kidney. You need help.”

“No. No, I don't need any help. I'm fine.” With the remainder of her strength, Helix forced herself up onto her hands and knees, and then, using the wall, dragged herself to a standing position. Pain arced through her body, and she trembled. “See?” she said to the stranger, who she still had not looked at. “I'm fine. I'm leaving now, see? I'm fine.” And she took a step and the pain made her gasp, but she kept her footing, for a moment, until dizziness swooped in from the corners of her vision like the black, confused wings of birds, and she fell, into the arms of this stranger, who as it turned out, was not very big at all. Staggering under her weight, the stranger slowly returned her to the ground.

“Okay,” she said. Helix still hadn't gotten a very good look at her face, just a quick blur of small pointed features and something peculiar about the eyes. “Okay, no doctors. I've got a car. It’s not far, I parked it under the overpass on Monroe. I'll go get it, and I'll take you to see someone. Not a doctor, a friend of mine. Hang on.” and she took one of Helix's hands, and placed it over the wound in the small of her back. “Keep that there, you don't want to lose any more blood. I'll be right back.” And she was, with a rag which she tied around Helix's waist. “I shouldn't be moving you at all, but I can’t get that boat of a car down this alley. Here, give me your arms.” and she wrapped Helix's right arms around her shoulder, and with her arm around Helix's waist, gently lifted her up to a standing position and steadied her.

“Wait, my raincoat,” said Helix.

“Forget it, you can get another one.”

“No, no I need it.”

“Then I'll come back for it. Now let's go.” And together, they spent the most excruciating ten minutes of Helix's life, getting her out of the alley and into the back seat of the stranger's car. A motor car, a big old convertible with the top down, ancient but still functioning.

Helix stared up at the sky, the night air chill through the fabric of her celluweave bodysuit. “My raincoat!” The stranger sighed, “Okay, hang on.”

She was back again in a moment, and she put the now torn and soiled raincoat over Helix, tucking it in on the sides. “Just as well, you need to keep warm.”

The car rumbled to noisy life and started to move. Helix didn't ask her where they were going, she just gazed up at the night sky, at the stars spinning far above her.

She was gone. He knew it as soon as he opened the door and saw the bare hook on the wall where he hung his raincoat. Only then did he notice the tomb-like silence of the empty apartment. He checked her room to make sure, but found nothing more than comic books and dirty clothes, scattered on the floor. Hector Martin wandered the vacant apartment, picking up objects and staring out the windows. She was out there somewhere, in that maze of buildings and streets, clouded over now with night. It wasn't like he hadn't expected it to happen. Hell, he'd hoped it would. But he'd let himself forget it. He'd gotten used to her — attached. Ah, he’d always been attached to her, ever since he found her. He flopped down on the couch and switched on his holotransceiver. He had several messages, announcements of meetings, biotechnical conferences, and one from Nathan Graham, the research and development project manager. He wanted to see Hector in his office tomorrow, to “catch up on developments in the Tetra project.” Catch up, sure, more like to find out why it was six months past due and $10,000 over budget.

Hector sighed and reached for an untidy pile of data cards on the coffee table. Maybe he could snow Graham with enough numbers to hide the truth of what was going on in the lab for a little while longer, but the most he could hope to buy was another six months. Maybe by then it wouldn’t matter anymore. But the data cards were all from several months ago. Graham would never be content with data this old. He clearly wanted to know what was going on now. For the past two months Hector had been recording everything on one encrypted card, and he knew exactly where it was. It was in the pocket of his raincoat.

Laughing, he got up and went into the kitchen, took the bottle down from the cupboard and poured himself a deep, dark drink. He shambled back to the couch with it and sat down. He took a large sip of the burning liquid and let it sit in his mouth, the vapors penetrating his sinuses. He swallowed it; a trail of fire down his throat to his belly. He leaned back in the couch, the glass cradled in his lap, his eyes glazed over with memories.

He remembered being twenty, and engaged to Eva. He was just starting his undergrad program in cellular biology then. They had a warm summer that year, and he and Eva took off one day for Kettle Point. The kettle stones were nearly all gone, the few that remained adorned the front yards of the houses on the road to the beach. Squat, round blobs of stone, their surfaces rippled, they only somewhat resembled ancient, overturned kettles.

Hector parked his automobile by the side of the road and they walked down to the water. The beach was rocky, and the water was cold, but about fifty feet from shore there was a large rock with a smooth, flat top to it. They crawled up on that rock, their skin damp and dimpled with gooseflesh, and they warmed themselves in the sun, kissing and touching each other until they were both blind with desire.

“Do you want to go home?” he asked her breathlessly, “or back to the car?”

“No,” Eva shook her blond head, her green eyes sparkling with the sun. “Let’s stay here.”

She always was the adventurous one, always urging him to do things he thought were unwise, but he hadn’t needed too much persuasion that day. The water, the sun, the rock, it was such a primal setting; he remembered thinking, “this is how the world began.” He also remembered secretly hoping to impregnate her. He never told her that, of course, he barely admitted it to himself. But it had been, he acknowledged now, the perfect time, the perfect place, to bring forth life. But Eva hadn’t gotten pregnant, and they went on, with school, with marriage and then divorce. He had nothing to show for his time with her except for memories and a few regrets. As for bringing forth life, he’d done that, but not in the usual way, and not with Eva. After getting his master’s degree in genetic engineering he’d gone to work for Minds Unlimited, a small research company on the cutting edge of self-aware concurrent processing. By modifying several homeotic genes controlling development of the central nervous system, Hector created the multiprocessor brains; the first and still by far the best of the organic computers.

With processing power, speed, and storage capacities far beyond anything Motorola or Intel could hope to offer for another ten years or more, the multiprocessor brains hit the computing industry like a bombshell.

At that time, companies like GeneSys were already developing biopolymers for industrial use, but no one had made the leap from using biotechnology for industrial applications to incorporating it into consumer products. If he’d been working for a larger company, marketing conservatives probably would have quashed the project. But Minds Unlimited was small and reckless and had little to lose. As soon as he developed the neurotranslator to interface the bioelectrical circuitry of the brains with regular electrical and fiber optic transmission lines, they threw the brains out into the market like Lot’s daughters to the mob. And they were wildly successful, ushering in a new era of consumer biotechnology.

If he’d been working for a company like GeneSys then, none of it would have happened. Someone like Graham would have got in his way. Just like he was doing now, with the tetra project. Deep in his heart of hearts, Hector hated Nathan Graham. He reminded him of every bully he’d ever encountered, from kindergarten on. They were all the same, making themselves strong through the weaknesses of others.

But Graham hadn’t been in research when Hector allowed Anna Luria, GeneSys’ CEO, to woo him away from Minds Unlimited. She’d made a strong case for his need to branch out into other areas of research, to not be pigeonholed as the inventor of the multiprocessor brains. She’d been right. If he had stayed at Minds Unlimited, all he’d have done was improve on brains, making them more powerful and efficient. He wouldn’t have created anything really new. Besides, he’d liked Anna; her management style, her vision for GeneSys, and he thought he’d like working for the company she ran. And he had, until four years ago when Graham became the research and development manager. When Graham swaggered in to his first department meeting, Hector knew they were in trouble. Since he’d been the manager, research and development had changed, becoming ever more profit oriented, and less and less given to pure research. He’d always known that someday he’d be at odds with Graham. Now the confrontation was imminent, and all the years Hector had avoided it had done nothing to prepare him. oOo

“Everything is an animal,” Nathan’s mother told him when he was six, tucking him into bed in their apartment in the Penobscot building. “A company is an economic animal. They are giants, made up of people, numbers, networks. We do not control them, they control us. The way to thrive in a company is to understand it, sometimes anticipate it; but only a company can control another company.”

He remembered her saying all this in a sweet, soft voice while stroking the side of his face and smoothing his hair, soothing him into sleep with tales of giants.

That was when she was still with Reynolds, before the Coke merger, before she lost everything. Before the giants ate her.

Nathan Graham swivelled in his chair and stared out the window of his office. On the twenty-fifth floor and facing south, he commanded a bird’s eye view of the city, spread like a carpet of garbage until Oz reared up, all glass and steel and soaring stonework, the Renaissance Center its spun sugar centerpiece. If he squinted, he could almost see the flying cars.

Saddled with his mother’s failure and educated in the public schools, Nathan had to fight his way through the GeneSys corporate structure in order to enjoy this view. He’d started as a temp in the mail room, it had taken years.

He was glad GeneSys had made their headquarters here, in the old Fisher Building. It was a beautiful building, for one thing, but beyond that, it stood alone on Grand Boulevard, two miles to the north of Oz, its isolation a proper symbol of its power. No matter what those nabobs down there might think, it was GeneSys, and GeneSys alone, that ran this town. And he was watching them, in case they tried to dispute it. He was familiar with the treachery of Oz, he knew better than to turn his back to it. The voice of his secretary, Jenet, came to him over the transceiver, “Dr. Martin to see you, Mr. Graham.”

“Show him in.” Nathan scrolled through project files until he found what he wanted; File #98-4302

Tetra.

The door opened and Dr. Martin stood just inside. A small, thin, greying blond mouse of a man, his unease apparent in the flicker of his eyes and in the way his rigid shoulders arched towards his ears.

“Dr. Martin, I’m so glad you could make time for me. Please, sit down. Can I get you anything?” Nathan crossed to the bar and poured cola into a cut crystal glass.

“No thank you.”

Nathan returned to his desk and took a long pull from his beverage. He set the glass down on a coaster.

“So how’s the project going?”

“It's coming along.” Martin licked his lips, and rummaged about in a beaten up vat-hide briefcase. At length he pulled out a sheaf of mylar. “I’ve prepared an update for you,” he said, placing the report on Nathan’s desk with all the prayerful hope of a Catholic offering holographic effigies to the Virgin. Nathan ignored the report, and opened the Tetra file on his transceiver. A stack of holographic forms materialized on the desk. “I've been going over your budget invoices. There are a few items here I wanted to ask you about.” He manipulated the virtual forms, picked one up and left it suspended in the air and pointed at one of the lines, highlighting it.

“Plants, Weber Brothers Greenhouses, $506.29,” it read. Graham picked up another form, and highlighted that one as well. “High-spectrum Halogen Capsules, DeLight, $1153.45.” Martin fidgeted as Graham continued to manipulate the forms until six invoices hung in the air between them. "Finches, BirdTown, $2034.65; Classical Music(25 items), Harmony House, $448.73; Li'l Big Tyke Jumping Gym, KiddyLand, $4522.84; Hindu Religious Art of Late Antiquity, Files 'n' Stuff,

$7099.38."

Nathan watched Martin swallow. Right about now he was probably wishing he’d accepted that drink. Nathan called up a subtotal for the invoices: $15,765.34.

“You'll forgive me if I fail to understand the necessity for these charges.” Martin’s eyes were wide, as if he had never seen these invoices before, but he didn’t try to deny the fact that he’d approved them. How could he? There was his signature at the bottom of each and every one, damning him.