Asimov's Science Fiction: October/November 2013 (30 page)

Jimmy intuited Kioga's thoughts and said in a loud voice that still hardly penetrated the surf of speech and music, "Colombia's number three, globally, in recreational somatic tailoring! More licensed and unlicensed omics tweakers than Brazil and Macau combined! Be careful though! They're not all baseline double-ex! If that even matters!"

Having manfully dealt with their original cocktails, Kioga and his pal began an increasingly unsteady crawl through a variety of clubs and bars, intent on participating fully in the scene, sampling all the native drinks, while not neglecting a modest amount of alcohol-buffering foodstuffs. After a few hours of metronomic imbibing, close to midnight, Kioga devoured two plates of aborrajados, cheese-packed plantain fritters, followed by some arepas de chócolo, and achieved a momentary lucidity, the eye of a swirling internal ethanol hurricane.

He found himself precariously perched atop a stilt-legged bamboo chair at a quaintly neon-decorated bar. Jimmy was visible nowhere.

Kioga turned to his left, and discovered an alluring woman staring at him with frank interest.

Rather petite, yet busty and well-curved, the woman wore her long dark hair simply, in lustrous parallel curtains that framed a strong set of features: hazel eyes topped with naturally thick eyebrows, delicately hooked nose, wide expressive mouth lipsticked a boysenberry shade, an impudent chin. She wore a tight-fitting short-sleeved shirt, on whose front abstract animated artwork ceaselessly replicated the colorful gyrations of the autocatalytic Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, simple classic piña-spidersilk jeans, and high-heeled lizard-skin espadrilles.

"Hola,"
Kioga managed.

"You are from Parque Arví," responded the woman in English.

Kioga's Science Park affiliation had never sounded less glamorous. "Is it that obvious? Couldn't I be, oh, some rich princeling from Swaziland?"

"Yes, I think maybe. In another life. But I heard you and your friend talking, so I know different. But why are you here?"

Kioga swiveled around, away from the woman, and almost fell off his stool. "Jimmy! Where are you, Jimmy? I'm being cruelly interrogated!"

The woman laughed brilliantly. "Your friend cannot help you now. He has gone off with two very indecorously dressed tarts. This is the correct word, I think, 'tarts'?"

"Knowing Jimmy, it is probably an entirely accurate description."

"Very well, then. You have no hope of rescue. So, I ask, why are you here?"

"Well, just to have a good time."

"You cannot do that in Parque Arví, with others of your kind?"

"Hey now, wait just a minute. 'My kind'? I'm as human as you, aren't I?"

"Sometimes I wonder. You Science Park people seldom descend to this level. You live apart from me and my kind. You work with each other, play with each other—marry each other. Maybe you are indeed a separate species—or becoming one. It is very much like something I read once, by a Mister Wells."

Kioga felt vaguely offended. "Except that we Eloi are the ones in this scenario who do all the work."

The woman's delicate nostrils flared. "Ha! You think I and my friends do not labor like donkeys, just to survive? I could show you such things—"

"Oh, you work hard, I'm sure. That is, those of you who aren't on some kind of government dole. But even your best workers don't really perform intelligently, or with any long-term vision. You're too focused on pleasure, and instant gratification. You have no code to live by, as we do in the Parks. No guiding principles."

"Instant gratification! I would be instantly gratified to kick you in
los huevos
right this minute!"

Kioga held up a placatory palm. "Okay, stop. Somehow we got off on the wrong foot. Couldn't we start over? My name is Kioga Matson."

"Please accept my apologies. I am Avianna Barranquilla."

They shook hands. Avianna had a strong grip, noted Kioga. Yet still, her small hand, lost in his, proclaimed a femininity he found inflaming to his rising lust. A brief flash of Mallory's terse goodbye kiss interrupted his wet reveries, then dissipated like exhausted utility fog in a maker cabinet.

"Can I buy you a drink?"

"Gracías. Just a Club Colombia beer, if you please."

Kioga opted for the same. A sweetish lager, the beer refreshed Kioga without contributing too much more to his inebriated state.

"You know I work for the Science Parks, Avianna. But what do you do?"

She looked slightly distressed. "It is a long story. Basically, I am trying to help my brother with an entrepreneurial project of his. But perhaps we should avoid speaking of our vocations too much, yes? It seems a touchy subject. All my fault, I admit."

"All right then. What should we talk about?"

"Well, what do you think of my beautiful country?"

"To be honest, I've hardly seen enough of it to form a worthwhile opinion. Parque Arví, of course, is well run and has produced some good things—but that's true of every other Science Park on the planet. The people I've seen downtown here seem happy and healthy and carefree and congenial—but I assume they're middle class or above, and quite secure. I don't know anything about other levels of your society, so I can't say how prosperous or equitable your nation is. As for your country's politics—sorry, no idea. Just not relevant to my life or anything that really counts in this world."

Kioga paused to sip his beer, and the influx of alcohol prodded his courage and tongue.

"However, I will
happily
proclaim with the
utmost
sincerity that Colombia produces the
hottest
women I've seen in my last
dozen
assignments."

Avianna seemed unperturbed by his overblown statement, and in fact appreciative of the compliment. Her smile lit up her face. "You truly think so? Myself included? But perhaps you are just being polite." Kioga placed a bold hand on her knee. "I always tell the truth to
una chica muy linda."

Avianna failed to raise an objection to his touch. "And I always accept protests of honesty from a handsome man. Let us celebrate our mutual accommodations."

Before Kioga quite realized an order had even been placed, the bartender was delivering a bottle of clear booze, which Avianna commandeered.

"This is
aguardiente antioqueño.
Once opened, the bottle must be finished."

"Start pouring!"

Somehow Kioga found himself on a dancefloor—whether in the same club where he had met Avianna or a different one, he couldn't say. The explosively loud and high-BPM music seemed to be located within his skull. Avianna was grinding against him, all lean flanks and tight roundels of ass. She cast a sultry, smoldering backward glance every half minute or so that sent ripples through his loins. Finally Kioga couldn't withstand the erotic sensations. He spun Avianna around, clutched her length tightly against his own burning skin and kissed her. Her tongue drove back against his.

They were at the bar—some bar, any bar—again, and Avianna was proffering a bowl of snacks.

"What's this—these? What is it?"

"Ai,
hombre!
These are
las hormigas culonas.
Fried ants! They are so good for your manhood. Just try them!"

Kioga grabbed a sloppy handful, crunched them up. Not bad. One ant popped liquidly. Weird...

Outside everything whirled: Colored lights with nimbuses, demonically laughing people, screeching night birds, automobiles powered with infernal electricity. Boozily, Kioga marveled that the aguardiente seemed to have positively killed all his flu germs.

"Try to walk, Kioga, just a few more steps. Here is the car."

Car? What car? He and Jimmy had gotten dropped off by Parque Arví staff.

Kioga laughed deliriously at the thought of Jimmy in a taxi. That had to be the answer. "Jimmy! Jimmy! Where are you, my lig?"

The car door opened and a strange man said in a kindly but forceful manner, "Oh, Mister Matson, Jimmy cannot help you now."

The smell of a leaky bioreactor allowed Kioga to focus his newly reborn consciousness. As an expert in industrial metabolics, he could not mistake the yeasty pong. So many clients had benefited from his help in optimizing their production lines. Surely these new owners would be no exception. Gotta show them that Science Park boffins had the best goods. He must be out on the fab floor now. Though how he had gotten here remained unclear....

With eyelids hoisted leadenly upward, however, Kioga did not see the expected gleaming large-scale facility of pipes and filtration units. Instead, he discovered a dank, poorly lit basement stuffed with amateur kit. A black economy sartorialist suite. The cheap bioluminescent jellyfish scabbed to the walls lent everything a sub-oceanic tint.

He found himself lying on a rickety cot. Seated patiently on folding chairs opposite him were three men—and Avianna. The innocuous yet competent-looking men wore stern, unmenacing expressions. Avianna looked only slightly less dour and no-nonsense.

"You return from your sad little decadent spree," said the woman.
"Bueno.
Now we can discuss things."

Kioga sat up, causing tectonic stresses in his abused head. "Oh, my Christ! Don't you have any Null-borracho, please?"

One of the men dispensed a pill with a glass of water. "Not Null-borracho. Much better. Homemade."

With no choice, Kioga uneasily accepted the foreign pharma. Ingestion brought astonishingly swift relief. He momentarily pondered inquiring about the formula, then decided he had more pressing issues.

"Now, discuss what?"

"How you will help us," said Avianna.

"Us? Who's us?"

"Me and my brother, Hernán."

Avianna indicated one of the men, a stolid, lantern-jawed fellow with a somewhat aggrieved air, like a bright hopeful child unjustly sentenced to a remedial class. He wore a tight T-shirt with the famous logo of prestigious edX University over his admirably chiseled chest.

"Our two friends here need not be named," Avianna continued. "They are just along for muscle, should you prove unruly. It is the plight of my brother that matters."

Hernán nodded graciously, with some deference, as if sheepish at the necessity of invoking non-familial assistance. "I will gladly explain, Mister Matson. We would not have brought you here if matters were not otherwise beyond our resolution. You see—"

Kioga suddenly sprang to his feet, sheets of acrid binge sweat gushing like spring freshets from his entire body. The Colombians reared back, startled, the two unidentified men reaching behind their backs and toward unseen waistband holsters.

A vision had burst upon Kioga: his young mother, captive in an African hut, the lethal Bee Hive device, himself a toddler—

"My phone! Where's my phone! They'll be homing in on it. If they think I've been kidnapped—"

Seeing Kioga meant no assault, the bodyguards dropped their readiness to deal hasty freeform hurt. Avianna placed a calming hand on Kioga's arm.

"Your phone is taking a journey on a plane to Bogotá. There is no need to worry."

"But I'm chipped, too! Look!"

Kioga pushed one arm of his jacket upward to show the branded patch of skin above his subdermal tracker. But to his surprise, the brand was gone, replaced by a large bruise whose dull pain now faintly registered for the first time.

Avianna smiled. "We borrowed an ultrasonic medical device from the local hospital. Extracorporeal shock wave treatment. What you would receive for kidney stones. Most effective, and totally non-invasive."

Kioga plopped down on his cot, his thrumming nerves slowly stabilizing. He didn't know whether to be angry, relieved, or impressed. "My god, I thought—"

Avianna regarded Kioga with a quizzical tenderness. "Did you really care that we four might die, Mister Matson? You surely would have survived, and then you would have been happily rid of our unwanted attentions."

"Of course I care! What kind of monster do you think I am, anyhow?"

Avianna squeezed his arm. "No kind of monster at all—Kioga. Especially if you lend us your help. This is why we picked you, over your friend Jimmy. He is such a nihilist. Not like you. Now, just listen..."

The region around Medellín, particularly the state of Chocó, had been gold mining territory for many decades, ever since the country had sought to diversify from its drug cultivation at the same time that global prices for gold had soared. But so many of the unregulated companies played fast and loose with the environment, gouging the gold out of the deep-riven earth and processing it with cyanide and mercury, which contaminated the land.

Hernán Barranquilla had worked as an environmental engineer for one of the larger players, Conquistador Mining, although his budget had been practically nonexistent, and any corporate support for his department a public relations sham. Nonetheless, he had discovered a very valuable wild microbe in the ore tailings. It thrived by metabolizing poisons, although poorly, leaving its milieu marginally cleaner than received. With much labor, over many months of off-duty nights and weekends, Hernán had tailored the bug, right here in this basement lab, to perform miracles of remediation. He had brought the improved bug to Conquistador first, thinking they would license it. Instead, they had stolen it, confiscating all samples, and fired its inventor.

"But if I could only get back even a trace quantity of the microbe, Mister Matson," Hernán explained, "I could prove my ownership. Establish a patent and market my invention to help my country."

"How is that?"

"I have encrypted my proprietary information into the genome of the microbe. It cannot be removed without ruining the best features of the bug. Any readout of the genome proves my claims."

Kioga thought about this story. The clever hack appealed to him, a natural extension of his industrial metabolics concerns. He felt sorry for this ingenuous guy, up against corporate perfidy. And being able to help Avianna's brother—

Kioga regarded the woman with what he hoped was a righteously indignant glower that communicated, with high semiotic wattage:
You deliberately led me along by my dick and abducted me and now you have the nerve to ask for my help?