Severance (36 page)

Most of the material in it was pretty tame, vast tracts
dedicated to recreational pharmaceuticals and surely exaggerated cautionary
tales about their usage. Anything that wasn’t harmless — such as the genetic
engineering section — was completely impenetrable. The section on data genes
was written in some kind of mongrel, bio–mystic version of Chinese, and the
translator was having a hell of a time sorting it out. Thankfully, it was heavily
footnoted, explanatory notes attached by past readers, explaining their
missteps.

Harold knew he could probably manage what he was planning
with just the footnotes alone, but still wanted to step through the original
text to ensure nothing important had been omitted. He needed as full an
understanding of the process as possible, because he was pretty sure he was
about to break new ground in it. The location where the data would reside was
critical, lest something important — perhaps the bit that stops people from
growing beaks — was overwritten. This had always been done by hand, by experts —
apparently strange bio–mystic Chinese experts. Harold’s plan, to program these
strange instructions and logic into the gene tinkerers, had never been tried
before. It was the only way his plan would work, autonomously, long after he
was gone.

The key to his plan was the tinkering engine, the device that
stored the nanobots when they weren’t in use, maintaining their population at a
fixed level. It also contained the broadcast mechanisms which imprinted the
desired programming into each set of nanobots as they were prepared for a
specific patient. This engine had its own logic circuits and memory,
independent of the ship’s central network. The data from Kevin’s terminal could
live there secretly and indefinitely, to be scribbled into the DNA of every
person who ever got tinkered. Repair jobs, fetal screenings, canned babies,
every one of them would end up tagged with Harold’s graffiti. This was
profoundly unethical — if he got anything wrong, the amount of risk he was
putting these people in was enormous. But as profoundly unethical behavior
seemed to be the only way things got done on the ship, well, why not roll the
dice on some beak–people?

There was still the question of how to get the data out of
these unsuspecting genomes once it was in there. There would be no one to
explain to his subjects what had happened to them, and, hopefully, no outward
sign at all that there was anything unusual about them. A very low–level
genetic analysis would spot it, which was something anyone with a medical
terminal could do if they saw the need to. But Harold didn’t know any
diagnostic methodology that prescribed an analysis of that detail. Which meant
he needed a way to provoke one of his unknowing subjects into an investigation
of that depth.

A beep on his terminal from Martin. His treatment completely
successful, Harold had almost immediately hit the fabrication man up for the
favor he had offered before entering quarantine. Martin had seemed a little
surprised, obviously not having made the offer with any expectation it would be
accepted. But Harold played it delicately, asking Martin to knock together a
little shelving unit for his office, which he did genuinely need. He had received
the shelving unit — a pretty nice one made of wood — and thanked Martin with a
couple of drinks. Martin seemed happy to talk to someone with so many questions
about fabrication. He reminded Harold of Kevin in a few ways. Smart, kind, slightly
awkward. It was a shame to use him so utterly, but it was a small thing
compared to everything else Harold was up to. Harold tapped at his terminal,
reading the message.

Sure, I could make flyers. But why would you want to?

“An extremely good question,” Harold said, shaking his head,
as he tapped a message back.

It’s for a retro party thing I’m planning for a friend.

Plausible enough. He set the terminal down on his desk,
covering the translated nonsense that he no longer wanted to look at. He leaned
back, rubbed his beard, looked down at the terminal, and sighed. “Come on,
Harold,” he said, steeling himself. “You can do this.” He brushed the terminal
to the side of the desk and leaned back in over the cookbook.

Ghosts are the retrotransposons — tread wisely with enormous
canons best left unused?

“Oh, come on,” he said, eyes widening. “Now you’re just
fucking with me.”

Leroy fidgeted as the gun made its way down the line. He
wanted it. Why didn’t they have more to go around? He was pretty sure the guy
had said something about that. He hadn’t really been listening at the time, had
probably been looking at the gun. No, scratch that. No probably about it. He
had been looking
the fuck
out of that gun. He had no time for listening —
even his ears were looking at that gun.

A moment of self doubt washed over Leroy. Could it be
possible that by listening more, he would get the gun faster? Leroy thought
about that for a bit, but it mostly turned into thinking about the gun again.

Ricky had gotten scared and run as soon as he saw the crowd
in the arena. Leroy had known he would and had made only a token effort to mock
him.
Let him fiddle with himself in his room.
Let him miss out on the
coolest thing to happen on the Argos in infinity years.

The trainer guy who knew how the gun worked seemed pretty
cool–looking. He had a hat and a holster to put the gun in. Everything about
him screamed ‘Serious Gun Business.’ Leroy knew that impressing him was the key
to getting his own gun. Would listening do the trick for that, or would just a
lot of looking work? Leroy looked and thought about the gun some more.

Trainer guy stopped in front of the dude next to Leroy.
Leroy watched how the training guy explained how the parts of the gun worked.
From what Leroy could see, there were really only two parts, a front and a
trigger, and you didn’t want to be on the front side when the trigger was
pulled. But trainer guy dragged it out, way more than was probably necessary.
Like he was some kind of big shot or something.
A gun joke!
Leroy was
getting so close, he could think of gun jokes without even trying.

Eventually, his neighbor got his chance to hold the gun
himself. Leroy watched as he tried shooting at the dummy on the wheeled
chair a short distance away. Shot after shot in rapid succession, all misses.
What
an idiot.
Finally, the dummy shuddered. “Got it!” the moron shouted.

Trainer guy — Leroy could see now he had a name tag that read
Croutl — took the gun back. “Did you?” He walked over to the target. “Your
first eight shots,” he said, pointing at the dummy, “did not land here. Your
next four,” he said, holding his arms up searchingly, “may not have landed in
this room.” Finally, he pointed at the chair beneath the dummy. “Here’s your thirteenth.”

Leroy laughed. The moron glared at him, but Leroy didn’t
care.
This guy sucked.

“You think you can do better, kid?” trainer guy said. He
ripped the gun out of the moron’s hands and flipped it around, holding it
tantalizingly out in front of Leroy. “Were you listening to what I said about
how this works?”

This was a trick question, but Leroy was pretty sure he saw
a way through. “Yes,” he said. And swallowed. The gun waggled in front of him.
Holy
shit, it’s really happening.

But before he could reach out and take it, a thump from the
front of the arena. Everyone but Leroy turned to see the double doors slam
open, a pair of men entering pushing a big crate on wheels into the arena. “Guns
here!” one of them yelled. “Come get your guns!”

The gun that was rightfully Leroy’s withdrew, the trainer
guy quickly sliding it into his holster. “Everyone calm down,” he shouted to
the excited trainees. “No one’s getting any guns yet.” To the men who had just
entered with the crate, he shouted, “Put those away. They’re not done yet.”

“You’ve had like an hour with them!” one of them said.

“You’re not teaching them how to write with the fucking
things are you?” the other asked. They kept pushing the wheeled crate over to
the recruits, who broke ranks, rushing over to it.

“Hey!” trainer guy shouted. “This isn’t a fucking game.”

“Relax, pig,” one of the men delivering the crate said. “Get
your guns here, folks. Use ’em for shooting assholes!”

Leroy had stayed rooted in place throughout this exchange,
eyes having not left his gun, now in trainer guy’s holster. Within seconds, the
other recruits reached the crate and began arming themselves. Only moments
later, shots began echoing around the arena, impacting target dummies, chairs,
walls, the floor, everything else.

“Shit,” trainer guy said, backing up into Leroy. A pair of
shots bracketed his feet. Someone laughed. Another two sailed overhead, and as
he turned to run, one caught him square between the shoulders. He collapsed on
top of Leroy, sending them both to the ground.

Leroy wriggled out from underneath the comatose trainer guy.
This is fucking bonkers!
Leroy could tell this wasn’t a particularly
cool situation to be in, and he definitely intended to run away as soon as he
could. But there was one thing first, one thing staring up at him from the
trainer guy’s hip.
Take me, Leroy,
it whispered.

“All right, gun,” Leroy whispered back. He took it.

And it was awesome.

§

Helot stopped a short distance away from the barricade
watching his security chief throw a fit about a couch. Two wide–eyed security
officers shifted the offending piece of furniture into a less objectionable
position, reinforcing whatever weakness in the barricade Thorias had perceived.
Thorias directed his attention to something else worth yelling at, and the
process repeated itself, this time with a pair of desks. Beyond the slowly
growing barricade yawned the inviting glow of the garden well.

They were on the fourth level inspecting Thorias’ lines and
arrows. Even aside from correcting couch placement issues, it was useful doing
this in person; the Sheeping effect worked best when orders were delivered face–to–face.
And indeed, Thorias had made a point of speaking with every officer at every
barricade, a painstaking process of learning and forgetting names as quickly as
possible.

No longer seeing anything worth yelling about, Thorias left
the officers and returned down the street. Helot fell in step beside him as
they rounded the corner onto 8
^th
, moving parallel to the new front
lines. A block later, they stopped at one of the side streets.

Here, the bulkhead doors were still closed. Thorias walked
up to the door to inspect it along its seams. Helot had already seen this up
close and knew the welded spots Thorias was looking for. Thorias knelt on the ground,
if not actually sniffing the welds, at least coming awfully close.

Helot liked the idea of welding the doors shut. He liked it
a lot. He still didn’t fully understand the chief’s logic for leaving the doors
open on the main streets, even if they were now all protected by fortified
barricades. Thorias had said something about “fields of fire” and “cones of
control,” and Helot had let it go. It had sounded convincing enough; since the
riot, Helot hadn’t wanted to second–guess his security chief anymore.

Thorias got up and returned to Helot at the intersection. “We’re
sure they can’t be cut?” Helot asked.

“Curts assures me they don’t have any fuse torches,” Thorias
replied. “Though who knows how reliable that ass is.” He turned and began
walking to the next side street. “Explosives? Probably not. They could fab
those, but it’s fussy work. Would take them at least a few weeks.”

“And what happens if a van hits it?”

Thorias growled but didn’t say anything, instead rounding
the corner to go smell another door. Helot didn’t push him on it, didn’t like
thinking about it much himself. That the two people they had falsely accused of
terrorism had turned out to be pretty capable terrorists was a bothersome
irony. Two of the fuse torches demolished, Curts’ schedule set back at least a
month. Not even the hilarious bruise on the back of Curts’ head could make Helot
feel better when he had found that out.

After Thorias’ door–smelling process repeated a few more
times, they came to the broad expanse of America. Turning north, they passed
the locked entrance to the Bridge and approached the barricade and officers
stationed out in the garden well. This barricade had been pushed much further
north than the rest, a necessary step to protect the Bridge. Helot couldn’t
give a damn about what the civilian government did or didn’t do while he tried
to cut the ship apart again, but Thorias had pointed out that from many of the
civilian government offices a “terrorist” could access the upper–levels of the
ship. Having this space defended was a necessary element for several of his
arrows to be…something. Fully self–actualized? That sounded right.

Most of the officers at the barricade had their backs
turned, a ripple of laughter spreading through the group, which came to a
sputtering halt when someone noticed their commanding officer bearing down on
them. “Chief Thorias. Sir,” one of the brave ones said.

Thorias walked right up to the group and stopped, standing
with his hands behind his back. “Carry on. Don’t let me interrupt you.”

The officer who spoke swallowed. “It’s nothing, sir.”

Thorias fixed his gaze on the officer. “It wasn’t nothing.
You were telling a joke. I’m in one of my rare joke–hearing moods right now. So
please, go on.”

Thorias waited while the young man weighed the pros and cons
of disobeying a direct order versus telling a poorly thought out joke to a
superior officer. “What’s the difference between a Chinese kid and an
Othersider kid?” he finally said. Helot felt his jaw tighten. It wasn’t the
first time he had heard that term used to describe the people on the other side
of these barricades, but he still didn’t like it.