Accidental Creatures (26 page)

“Oh sure, you bet. Anything else?”

“I’ll call again later.”

“I’ll hold my breath.”

oOo

Chango parked her car on the street across from the U of D Mercy College campus and took a backpack out of the trunk. They walked to the now defunct biopoly research building. An old maple tree grew next to the wall on one side. Chango, Helix and Benny stole across the grass to the shelter of its shadows. Benny pointed up, and Helix saw that one of the tree’s branches brushed against a window on the second floor. Without a word Chango scaled the trunk and climbed out onto the arching branch. It swayed slightly under her weight. Helix wondered if it would support her. Chango was a few minutes with a small, silver instrument, its whir a counterpoint to the chirring of crickets. “Sst. Come on.”

Helix gripped the trunk of the tree with her upper arms. Her lower arms were useless as far as pulling herself up was concerned, but at least she could use them for clinging. Her feet scraped against the bark and she hauled herself up into the leaves. Below her she heard Benny grunting as he climbed the tree. Chango had the window open, and she pushed her backpack in before climbing through. Helix followed her and found herself standing on a second floor balcony overlooking two large, empty vats. “They’re empty,” said Helix.

“Yeah,” whispered Benny, climbing through the window. “This place has been closed up for years. But look.” He pointed to a stack of barrels in the far corner, “maybe some of it is still good.”

“Do you have any idea how many of those barrels it would take to fill one of these? Besides, how do we get them down?” They were stacked ten high.

“There must be a ladder around here somewhere,” said Chango.

“And you call me crazy,” said Helix. “What if some of that spills on you?”

“That’s why I brought this.” Chango opened the flap of her backpack and showed her the sleeve of a divesuit. “It was Ada’s.”

Helix glanced about the building again. “What kind of security do you think they’ve got in here?”

Chango shrugged, “Judging from the window, not much, ‘course you never can tell.”

“I’ll stay up here and keep lookout,” said Benny.

There was a ladder at the far end of the building, down a long aisle past the dingy flanks of the vats. They carried it back to the tanks and stood at its base, looking up.

“Christ, I don’t know about this,” said Chango.

“They look heavy.”

“I don’t know if the ladder will hold, they’ve got to weigh fifty pounds apiece.”

“I might be able to do it. At least I can try to see if they’re any good. Put your suit on.”

Helix climbed the ladder, alternately grasping the rungs with her upper and lower hands. As she went she glanced at the wall of stacked barrels beside her. Some of them were corroded, possibly leaking. She reached the top of the ladder. The last row of barrels was just above her head. With her upper fingers she grasped one of them by its bottom rim.

She wedged her fingers underneath the barrel and inched it out until she was able to lift it free. She grasped the barrel with her lower arms. The ladder wobbled precariously as she reached for the rungs with her upper hands. She clung there a few moments, until the swaying stopped. She was just about to start down when the first floor doors burst inward and ten or more GeneSys security guards ran in, brandishing tranq guns. “Run!” she yelled at Chango, and heaved the barrel towards the approaching guards.

oOo

Chango scrambled for the stairs as the barrel crashed to the floor behind her. She heard yelling as the guards scattered to avoid the splashing growth medium. Where in the hell was Benny? she wondered as she pounded up the steps to the balcony. He was gone from his post by the window and he certainly hadn’t done much of a job of warning them. Chango paused at the window, looked back and saw Helix, still on the ladder but surrounded by guards. There was nothing she could do now but get away and get help.

Outside, the building was bathed in flashing green and yellow lights. Chango dropped to the ground and crouched in the shadow of the tree. She heard the squawking of a transceiver from a levvan parked in the street. She scanned the broad spread of mowed grass before her. She didn’t see anyone there, didn’t see anyone around the levvan either, though that didn’t mean no one was there. She ran, bent at the waist, over the grass, the night air cool against her skin, her breath and the pounding of her heart roaring in her ears, drowning out the transceiver and the chirring of crickets. She thought she heard shouts, but she kept running.

She’d gone four blocks before she noticed the levcar following her, gliding silently along the magnetic roadway. She never would have known it was there, except she caught a glimpse of it as she turned one corner, and then saw it again, a block further on. She cut through an alley, narrow and paved only with cloncrete, but when she got to the street on the other side, there it was again, closing in on her. Her heart pounded in her chest like it would burst. To her left was the university medical center, a cluster of buildings with a large driveway in front, leading to an underground parking structure. She’d been here before. Between the close set buildings was a labyrinth of walkways. If you were in a levcar, you had to park it, and walk to the building you wanted. She headed for the main entrance and veered off onto a cloncrete sidewalk bordered by hedges. Behind her, in the night, she heard the distinct sound of car doors slamming, and footsteps running. Chango zigzagged between buildings, the footsteps behind her growing closer. She thought she could make out two sets. There were shouts, and something whizzed past her head, very fast. She ducked around another corner and she was in a cul de sac between two tall sandstone buildings, a high brick wall running between them.

“Give it up,” she heard someone call behind her, but she ran to the wall nevertheless, ran and jumped and scrabbled at it with her hands but she couldn’t climb it. Her breath coming in explosive gasps she clawed and pounded at the wall until her fingers bled. There were tears on her face when she turned around. There were two of them, guys, both dressed in green coveralls and carrying tranq guns and night sticks. One was nearly a head taller than the other, and broader through the shoulders. They stood about ten feet from her, their tranq guns trained on her. She looked at her torn, bleeding fingers. Slowly she lifted one finger to her forehead, and daubed it with blood, and then she walked slowly towards them, her hands at her sides and carefully visible. When she got between them they grabbed her, cuffed her hands behind her back, and each taking an arm, walked her back to the street and the waiting car.

Hyper twirled the data card between his fingers as his eyes flickered across a directory of GeneSys’

information systems. Dr. Martin had a very high security clearance. Even better than would be expected for a top researcher. Why would he need access to the security records, for instance, or personnel?

Hyper got up from his maglev seat and lit a reefer, and smoking it, paced the floor. He hadn’t seen Chango or Helix since the riot this morning, and neither had anyone else he’d talked to. From his vantage point on the Humbolt water tower, he’d seen Vonda and Helix running through the mob, but as he focused his machines on the divers ahead of them he lost track of where they were. He watched while the police made arrests, waiting until the street was clear to gather the torn remains of his robots. By the time he got back here Chango was gone.

It was her disappearance that alarmed him the most. For Vonda and Helix it would be prudent to lay low for a while, preferably some place outside of Vattown. But Chango didn’t even go to the picket line. She had called the police, though. That much he knew from the call log of his transceiver headset, which she’d left very neatly in the middle of his worktable. Perhaps she’d gone in search of Helix, in which case she might be incommunicado as well, but there was something wrong. For one thing, he hadn’t been able to get hold of Benny all day, and it wasn’t because he was in jail. Hyper had called the police station and learned that neither Helix, Vonda, Chango or Benny had been arrested. The whole thing bothered him. He was worried and he wanted someone to talk to. Sinking back into his maglev seat, he opened the employee directory and scanned the M’s. Maybe Dr. Martin would be home.

His listed number turned out to be a message dump, but because he had Martin’s security code, he was able to access his file, and get his live number.

It rang twice and a worried voice answered. “Hello?” It was just voice, blackout on visuals. At least he had that much sense, but Martin had to have sender id on a system like this, and he was answering unknown callers on the second ring.

“Hi,” said Hyper, and smiled for the transceiver picking up his image and beaming it to Dr. Martin.

“Who is this?”

“I’m Hyper. You don’t know me.”

“You must have the wrong number.”

“Don’t hang up,” Hyper anticipated the invisible movement. “I’m a friend of Helix’s.”

There was silence in suite 1567 of the GeneSys building, and then, “How is she?”

Hyper shrugged, “I don’t know. I don’t know where she is.”

“How did you get this number?”

“From your data card. Helix gave it to me for safekeeping,” he lied. It wouldn’t help matters any for Martin to know he and Chango had stolen the card.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“This morning, before the riot,” said Hyper.

“The riot. But I heard she got away.”

“Apparently she did, but I haven’t seen her since this morning. There’s someone else, a woman named Chango. She’s a friend of Helix’s too. I think they might be together, and I’m afraid something’s happened to them. Do you know where they might be?”

“No. I wish I did.” There was a pause. “You got this number using my data card. Presumably you’ve had a look around in there, then.”

“Yes. Yes I have.”

“Then you know about her. What she is.”

“Yes. You’ve outdone yourself, Dr. Martin. The brains were impressive, but this-”

“Does she know?”

Hyper shrugged. “She knows she’s not human. But she wouldn’t look at your notes. She said she didn’t need to. Once she started diving, it didn’t take long for her true nature to surface. What did you hope to accomplish, keeping her there? You should have cut your losses and brought her back home after the divesuit incident.”

“You misunderstand. I never intended for her to get that job in the first place. I intended for her to get far away from here, much farther than Vattown.”

“Well if you didn’t diddle with her files, who did? I can’t believe management made this decision. They’re evil, not stupid.”

Hector Martin laughed. “I suppose it was her mother,” he said.

“Her mother?”

“Helix is not the first of her kind.”

“Oh. I just assumed, with the kind of security clearance you’re sporting-”

“That was a gift from her mother as well. A sort of back handed gift, since she arranged it for her own use. But she used someone else’s code to manipulate the personnel files. She wouldn’t want that traced to me...” Hector’s voice trailed off momentarily. “Are you a vatdiver?” he asked suddenly.

“No. I’m a sport. Look, I know you don’t know me, but I’ve let you have a good look at me. And you know that with the kind of information I have at my disposal, I could have screwed you over ages ago. But I didn’t. Now, could you bring that screen down please, so we can both talk face to face?”

There was a pause, and then the pale, drawn face of a man in his middle forties glowed into view in the air before him. “Better?”

“Thanks.”

Martin’s brows knitted. “You say you’re not a diver but-Do you know of a man named Nathan Graham?”

“Nathan Graham... Wait, yeah. He used to be the production controller several years back. A real heavy. Everyone around here hated him.”

“Yeah, well, he’s in research now. He’s the reason I wanted Helix to get far away from here. He wants the project terminated, and in this case that’s a pretty strong term to be using. He told me himself he arranged the riot in order to get her killed. If something has happened to her, it’ll be because of him.”

Hyper stared at him. Martin had grayish blond hair, thinning a bit at the temples and crown. “What are we going to do?”

“Graham has somebody working for him, in Vattown I’m guessing. I don’t know who it is,” said Martin. Hyper thought of Chango — how she’d always insisted that there’d been foul play in Ada’s death. Maybe she was right, maybe Graham was still working with someone on the inside. It wouldn’t have taken much, to turn the strike into a riot, discrediting the vatdivers and taking care of Helix at the same time.

“Do you have any idea who it might be?”

“No, not really,” said Hyper, “and following up all the possible leads would take time we don’t have. It’s been hours since the riot. Graham and whoever he’s working with probably have them by now.”

“Yeah. We can hope that Helix and your friend skipped town, but I wouldn’t bet on it. You have access to GeneSys security systems through my clearance. Use it. See if they’ve brought anyone in the last few hours. I’m going to try to put Graham under wraps. Call me back as soon as you check the files.”

“You’re pretty comfortable with other people using your code, aren’t you?”

“Not really.” Hector shrugged. “But there can be advantages to being in two places at once.”

oOo

When Helix came to she was tied to a chair in a laboratory. A large polyglass tub stood about ten feet in front of her. It was filled with growth medium. She could smell it, and the pores of her skin cried out for its touch.

A door on the other side of the room, past the tub and a number of benches, opened with a soft click and a man came in. He was of medium height, with heavy rather than muscular shoulders and a flat belly that must have cost him plenty. He wore a dark grey sylk suit, immaculately tailored, and his reddish brown hair was neatly combed back from his forehead. He had quick, cool grey eyes. He smiled, and his face crinkled in small lines around his eyes and nose which she felt were quite deliberate, probably surgically devised.