Darwin's Paradox (22 page)

Zane obviously decided that he’d defused her suspicion, taking her smile as a tacit acceptance and an invitation to go on. “There’s so much we can learn about ourselves, viruses and artificial intelligence through studying you, Julie. You’re unique. Incredibly valuable. What more can I say?” He waved his hands.

Julie felt muscles that had just started to relax tighten again. Frank had said the same thing. “Yeah, valuable,” she muttered. Too valuable. Now that she’d destroyed their pesky A.I. rebels, what did they still want from her?

“No, you don’t get it do you?” Zane said in a frenzied excitement that stunned her. “You and this virus have this...thing together that no one else has. You’re the only person on this planet who can speak directly to Proteus, to us, and to the machine intelligence all at the same time. No other veemeld, no other person can do that.”

Julie felt a surge of energy prickle her body. Something snapped into place—Gaia and Proteus. Gaia was involved somehow, probably still hoping to develop her new race of Icarians, perhaps by somehow harnessing the power of the sentient virus inhabiting over half of the Icarian population. It was too appealing for Gaia to not be involved. This was her new paradigm: the whole city’s population at her whim through Proteus. If Gaia could access its consciousness through people like Julie, or better yet Angel, responsive and openly able to communicate with Gaia’s new protégé, Proteus...Julie’s chest cramped. That was too frightening! Was that scenario even possible? If it were, Gaia would make it so. Julie recalled something Zane had told her about research from the mayor’s office. That “someone” in the mayor’s office interested in Darwin statistics was none other than the mayor herself, Gaia looking for that elusive connection to Proteus.

“Darwin spreads through sexual contact in adults,” Zane interrupted her feverish thoughts. “Only you—oh, and I suppose your daughter too got Darwin when you were immature.” He coloured suddenly, realizing her possible misinterpretation of his use of the word. “I mean ‘undeveloped’” He laughed in embarrassment, eyes probing her breasts.

She helped him out, “Pre-adult, you mean.”

“Yeah. I think getting Proteus at a pre-pubescent age allowed the virus to interact with your still developing nervous and endocrine systems. Your body was much more accepting. Vee knows how Proteus interacts with your daughter who had it from before she was born...”

Julie drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. Had she done the wrong thing in coming here? She gathered her lower lip in her teeth and wondered if all she’d done was make it easier for them to kidnap Angel. “Proteus scares me,” she said. “What’s it want? Is it capable of having its own agenda? And can it be manipulated, Zane?”

“Those are hard questions, Julie.” Zane stroked his chin, but suddenly his face lit up with an idea. “You can help a lot by letting me do some tests on you at the lab.” He now grinned like a kid asking for candy from his mom.

“Now?” She hardly thought this was appropriate. Or was that her fear talking? “They’ll be looking for us there,” she objected with a frown and stood up.

“Not if they don’t see you,” a quiet high-pitched voice said.

Julie had almost forgotten that Victor was there. “What do you mean?”

He gave her a clumsy smile, eyes gleaming with a plan and hands stroking his droid. “Gaia hasn’t taken everything away from me, yet.”

Julie and Zane exchanged glances. “Okay, Victor, you have our undivided attention,” Julie said, glancing from Victor to the droid.

“Hey,
there veemeld-lover,” Washington gargled through a mouthful of food. “Got some grub for you. Help yourself. I’m not your babysitter.” He slopped a pile of the vile-looking mix of clone beans and re-fried potatoes on the dirty plate that he kept using without washing, and sat down on one of the shapeless cloth chairs. Crossing his thick legs in a near-graceful pose ill-fitting someone of his ilk, Washington set on his dinner like a hungry animal.

Daniel felt anger bubble up then dissipate with lack of energy. He hated it when Washington called him a veemeld-lover. He ran his hand through his dirty hair and exhaled with despair. He wasn’t hungry. In fact, he felt sick to his stomach. The smell of food cloyed in his stomach—it stank of the inner city, like burnt grease, cabbage and nano-soup. He leaned back on his sunken chair and let his thoughts collide with one another in a free-for-all of self-pity.

When he’d seen her standing in the Pol Station hallway in her blazing red tunic, his throat had closed. She was so beautiful! Not the same as she was out in the heath—those clothes and Icaria itself had somehow transformed her into something else entirely. Something elusive and intimidating. Then he’d noticed Frank Langor slumped beside her and the other two men. She’d been very attentive to Langor, supporting him as they fled, leaving Daniel behind.

Daniel bowed his head and brought his hands to his face. Julie’s expression when she’d first seen him in the Pol Station haunted him. She looked stunned and horrified. She must have concluded that he was a Vee-radicator, especially when he refused to flee with them when he’d had the obvious chance. How could she guess that he had a hole in his chest with a bomb ready to go off. His heroic plan to help her escape had collapsed under the maelstrom of confused fighting, and then he’d lost the courage to tell her about Dykstra. Partly, he rationalized, because it had become obvious that Julie and her friends were already escaping from the Pols, with Langor likely as their ransom. But why did it have to be him?

He knew her mind had been screaming questions about Angel. Where was she? Was she still alive? He had no idea where his daughter was and nausea flooded inside him, filling his stomach where a great hollow ached.

Washington turned to him and spoke with a full mouth, “Feel bad we didn’t bring back your woman, eh?”

Daniel glared at him and said nothing.

“Hey, she got away,” Washington continued blithely. “You should be happy with that.”

He was, Daniel thought, drawing as much comfort from the thought as he could; but there was still the question of Angel.

“Chaos, we should have killed her,” Washington went on, stabbing a heap of potatoes with his dirty fork. “The Head Pol was with her too, did ya see?” He shoved the pile into his mouth. “What a goddamned prize he’d have been. Got me how she and her friends managed to capture him. Looked like he crapped his pants, eh?” He chortled and food flew out of his mouth. “She must’ve pleased him good, that wild cat. Sent him to chaos and back. He’s her prize, now—”

Daniel hurled out his lunch in surges of agony.

“Shit!” Washington yelled with disgust, jumping to his feet. “You’re going to clean it up this time.”

***

As Daniel crept along the floor on all fours, wiping up his vomit with an already filthy cloth, Washington hovered over him. “You don’t think much of us, do ya?” Daniel kept on wiping in silence. “You know, we just want the best for Icaria.”

Daniel threw the stinking, disgusting cloth into the pail and glared up at the hulking man. “By killing my wife?”

“Hey, nothing personal,” Washington shrugged. “We’re not going to kill her—at least not right away, anyway,” he sneered. “But you have to see the bigger picture, lover boy—she’s a freaking veemeld.”

“There must be hundreds of veemelds in Icaria-5. Why my wife?”

“Chaos, man, don’t you know how unique she is? She’s your own goddamned wife, for vee’s sake! Julie Crane’s no ordinary veemeld. She represents the ultimate in technological evolution: she’s a prototype of the human-machine. A new goddamned species, Woods!”

“So, you do know my name.” But his mind was racing with what Washington said. Julie, the ultimate human-machine...a new species...

“Of course I know your name,” Washington scoffed. “We’ve been watching you out there in the heath for a year now.”

Anger flashed. “You’re the assassins that were chasing her!”

Washington’s lip-less mouth twisted into what Daniel interpreted as a smirk. “We did try to kill her, yeah. But only a couple of months ago, when we heard they were going to bring her back. That new mayor of Icaria-5, that bitch veemeld-lover, wanted your sassy wife.”

Daniel looked puzzled. “What for?”

“I told you, idiot! To start a new species! My spy told me that they want your wife to do some voodoo with the A.I.-core first, before they clone her or whatever they intend to do. Chaos, I bet she caused that mess with our A.I. network yesterday. Shot a hole in the system with her third eye or something.”

Daniel pulled the filthy rag out of the pail and continued to wipe the mess on the floor. He couldn’t face Washington anymore. His chest ached and despair bled into anguish. What had Julie done? What had they—Icaria—made her into? He feared that she’d changed into something he wouldn’t recognize, someone who wasn’t his wife anymore. She didn’t even look the same, he considered grimly. She was more beautiful than ever, but in a frightening sort of way that completely excluded him.

Somehow those years outside in the heath seemed so far away. Everything he’d done to build a comfortable and happy life for them in the heath had vaporized like a cool mist dissipating on a fall morning under the withering rays of a relentless sun.

As it always had been before, he felt uneasy in Icaria. Displaced like a fish out of water, his breaths strangled, and he became leery and unsure of himself. Julie—his wife—looked so at home here in her flame-red tunic and wearing her vee-set with the ease of a technophile. She’d looked so competent, tall and in command. It was as he’d feared: he’d found her, only to discover that he’d finally, completely, and irrevocably lost her.

Julie
reclined in a patient-testing chair in the lab Zane had snuck them into in the Pielou Med-Center. She marveled at Victor’s ability to create a fake image for Icaria-5’s prying eyes. He had some special talents, unfortunately they all seemed to lie in the realm of subterfuge. Julie threw a glance at Frank, sprawled in a corner of the lab, hands and feet bound and mouth covered by a rag. He was finally awake and looked more than a little uncomfortable as he glared at her. She looked away.

As Zane connected a number of sensors to various parts of her and then to the inputs on the chair, her attention was wrenched back to the testing she’d resigned herself to submitting to. She had to admit that it frightened her a little. The results, that is. She had near-total confidence in the testing procedures because Zane had assured her of the non-intrusive nature of positron emission tomography and the newest in magnetic resonance imaging.

“Just hold still, Julie. This won’t take more than two minutes, and it won’t hurt at all.”

She did and it didn’t. After fiddling with switches and making strange faces at the monitoring station for several moments, Zane unhooked her and left them to check the readouts in the room next door.

Julie rose from the chair and wandered the room restlessly. She ended up standing across from Victor who seemed to cringe from her. Why did she frighten him so much? She wanted to pat his shoulder and tell him it was okay, he could relax, but she didn’t. Even though a part of him, a boyish timidity, reminded her of Daniel when he was young, there was another part of him, a lingering shadow of unknown and crafty intent that made her feel uncomfortable. She just couldn’t trust him completely. Giving him an awkward smile, she said in a low voice not to be overheard by Frank, “What happened? How did Gaia become mayor and you end up in the Pol Station? What went wrong?”

Victor made a pathetic attempt at a smile. Was he thinking of the data cube she’d put together that implicated Gaia? His hand kept moving from his side to his lips in spurts of nervous movement as he spoke in a shrill voice, “I lost control of my own people.” He gulped in some air and blinked repeatedly. Another nervous tick, she thought. “More than that. I lost control of Icaria. Even the A.I.s stopped listening to me. Next thing I knew I was being investigated for fraud and she just stepped in and took my place.”

“You never showed my information to anyone, did you?” she said quietly with a sad smile. She’d said it without bitterness.

He avoided her eyes. “Only the part about you being
Prometheus
and details of the artificial virus. I gave all that to the CDC.” His eyes flickered over hers briefly. “Of course,” he continued in halting rushed sentences, looking everywhere else in the room except into her eyes, “I used your model to get rid of the Secret Pols and to find the Dystopian ringleaders.”

“So no one knows that Gaia, not my father, was responsible for murdering his fellow scientists, Vogel and Tsutsumi.”

He visibly winced and shuffled his feet nervously like an insect pinned on the wall. “No one knows,” he said as if out of breath.

“Or that Gaia was behind Kraken’s murder, not me.”

He blinked repeatedly and swallowed, throwing his gaze to the floor like a child being punished. “No.” He kept his eyes cast down when he added in a voice so soft she barely heard his words, “I’m afraid, because of the information that I did make available about you, Icaria also holds you responsible for spreading Darwin.”

A long silence hung in the air as Julie digested that and realized that she wasn’t disappointed or surprised; she’d already guessed as much. So in Icaria’s eyes, she was still a treacherous murderer in a line of crazed killers. A mass murderer, considering her responsibility for Darwin. No wonder Tyers had been nervous taking her through the mall. If anyone had recognized her, there’d have been a riot for sure. Victor seemed the weakest link in a chain of required actions to put Gaia in her place. In all fairness to him, it was probably just as well that he didn’t tell anyone. Gaia had blackmailed the entire governing body of the Circle and she obviously had many hidden allies within Victor’s own network. Such an accusation would have led to his disappearance long ago and Icaria-5 would have been in Gaia’s hands sooner.

“Victor,” she began hesitantly, thinking of Daniel, and threw a glance at Frank, “What do you know about the Vee-radicators? Are they as extremist as they say? I mean...all of them?”

“Yes, all of them are,” he said with a sigh and eyes flickering back up to hers briefly. Perhaps he was relieved that she’d changed the subject. “According to them we’ve sold our souls to the machine world. They think the machines will take over and render us all extinct; and frankly, when the A.I.s started making demands and took control of some facilities and services, I couldn’t help wondering if the Vee-radicators were on to something.”

That’s exactly what Daniel would have thought, too. It was Julie’s turn to look down at the floor. Was that reason enough for him to join up with these militant extremists? How on earth had he stumbled into that group, and what had he done with their daughter? Where was Angel?

“But they’ve taken their paranoia too far, I think,” Victor went on, obviously sensing her growing distress but not fully understanding the reason behind it. “They hate vee-coms, vee-sets, and veemelds with a passion.” He looked her in the eyes briefly, then looked away as if her gaze back would melt his soul. “And they hate you, in particular. To them, you’re the Mother of All Evil. Your ability to veemeld without mechanical aids has made you a monster to them. Everyone knows you’re
Prometheus
, part of an experiment to create a new machine-person that went somewhat awry. They...well...blame you for...” he let the obvious trail away, gulped some air and continued, “and they consider you a dangerous thing. The first of a dangerous new species, a harbinger of technological terror. They’d have torn you apart if they’d have gotten hold of you.”

Julie swallowed hard, believing him.

Frank made a noise that sounded like a strangled laugh. Julie glared at him, realizing her face was heating with a mixture of competing emotions. She swiftly redirected her gaze at the far wall as tears scalded her eyes. Why had Daniel and Angel come? To find her, of course. Yes, that made sense. But the rest didn’t. Allying himself with the very group that had tried to kill her in the heath? The very same group she had come here to stop, and to protect her daughter from? The group that obviously wanted her dead now! Didn’t he know? He was tattooed and holding a gun, after all! She had a sudden thought. Perhaps he didn’t know. He hadn’t seen the assassins in the heath, after all. Perhaps he still thought he was rescuing her.

Their philosophy at least on its surface matched his own, she thought and rubbed her face with her hand. Perhaps they’d inveigled him with half-truths to get his help. It was just the sort of thing he’d have done too—join some group like that, based on apparent principals, without perceiving their hidden motives. While she’d guarded herself most of her life and had warily shunned community, including her own veemelds, Daniel had always laid himself open, wanting to belong and be everyone’s friend. Naïve and blustery, he was pretty much an open book, with a quick temper that diffused as swiftly; while hers smoldered and brooded in contrast.

Poor, deceived Daniel, she thought. He’d come to rescue her, obviously, but it was he who needed saving now, she decided. And Angel, wherever she was...but that would have to wait; there was an order in which things had to happen for everything to work out right. First off, she had to stop Proteus and Gaia. For that she’d need SAM. Then, once Victor was re-instated in his rightful place as Icaria-5’s mayor, she could get his help in freeing her family from the Vee-radicators.

Zane strutted in, his grin telling her he was pleased and excited all at once. His eyes brightened when he caught her gaze. “You’re incredible!”

She wasn’t in the mood for complements. “Meaning?”

Victor came forward to look over the vee-pad readouts Zane was holding and they all huddled over it. “Look,” Zane said in a squeaky voice, “this shows the average number of functional neurons in five major areas in the brain. Now here’s a set from a Darwin victim who died shortly after testing. See which regions were initially affected? Here, in the brain stem.” He pointed. “Significant damage also occurred in the hippocampus, where memory is processed and redirected.”

Julie barely had time to register the information when Zane hastily touched the vee-pad control and another set of data appeared. “Now here’s one of a Darwin victim who survived due to remission,” Zane said. Julie noted that the surviving Darwin victim had shown neuronal regeneration in the damaged areas, slightly surpassing the average. Her eyebrows rose and she nodded, eyes meeting Zane’s. He nodded back. “We—that is, Niko and Irena—found that the dentate gyrus, a thin dark layer roughly in the shape of…n the hippocampus, was stimulated. The brain repaired itself.” Zane grinned and excitedly clicked to another readout. Here, the neurons had increased significantly in all five areas.

“That’s you, Julie.”

Drawing in a sharp breath, Julie looked up and met Zane’s crazy look. He nodded wildly. “You’ve undergone massive neurogenesis in not only the hippocampus and the brainstem, where Darwin typically affected its victims, but also in places where neurogenesis isn’t known to take place, like the neocortex. Stem cells in the septum, involved in emotion and learning, have given rise to new neurons. The striatum involved in fine-tuning motor activity, has particularly increased.”

That made sense, Julie thought quickly, recalling her improved reflexes. “How’s that possible?” she murmured.

“I don’t know!” Zane exclaimed happily in a shrill voice and waved his hand. “You’re a walking network of neurons. I estimate your neuronal capacity has increased by over twenty percent!” His words shot out in rapid fire. “It partially accounts for your increased cognition, your improved reflexes, heightened senses, and your capacity to learn and retain information.”

Zane was beside himself with excitement. He bounded around the room, looking for things, snatching up data sheets and putting them down without looking at them. He walked past Frank, sullen in the corner, without glancing at him.

Julie grew uncomfortable. Half sitting, half leaning against a counter, she threw a glance at Victor who had been quiet so far. His eyes darted at her with a pained look on his face that she couldn’t read.

“Okay,” she said, trying to calm her shaky voice and eyes flicking between Victor and Zane, “I guess it’s safe to say that Proteus is somehow responsible for my enhanced neuronal capacity. What does that mean in terms of its motivation, what it wants from me and from Icaria?”

“I have no idea!” Zane shouted, losing control. “This is incredible,” he turned away, looking abstracted. “I wish Niko and Irena were here. They’d freak. They found out now where’s that data, ah, there.” He fished out a stack of vee-pads from a box. “Their tests on Darwin survivors, victims and controls suggest that damage by Proteus was partially caused by chemical means. Niko discovered high amounts of a strange substance like a glucocorticoid, which inhibits stem cell proliferation in the hippocampus and adult neurogenesis.”

Then he spun around to face Julie, his mind racing. “But, you were infected when you were a child. Plus you have the unique genetic make up of a veemeld. Your hormones and your chemistry would have been different. Proteus obviously didn’t make or activate this strange substance in you. And Proteus was meant to act the way it did in you; certainly not kill people.” He started pacing the room again. “Somehow this intelligent virus learned to correct itself on some Darwin victims; but for some reason, which might have to do with the victim’s age at infection, no significant increase in neural activity accompanied this remission in adult Darwin victims.” He rushed toward her. “I need to run more tests on you.”

She backed away and threw up her arms. “Hold on, buddy boy. Slow down. Remember why we’re here. Not to test me to death, but to figure out what Proteus wants and is capable of.” Then to deal with it and find her family and get out.

Zane blinked hard and seemed to come down to Earth. “You’ve got to tell me about your communication with this virus. It talks to you, doesn’t it?”

Julie squirmed and shot a nervous glance at Victor, who was listening intently. “Yes. In veemeld.” After a pause she admitted quietly, “And in my dreams.” She exhaled and added, “It also communicates in a non-verbal way. That happened as soon as I was infected with it when I was five. I’d describe it as the high-pitched sound of chirping insects. I think it’s how the virus communicates with itself. The chirps let me know when I’m in danger by increasing their intensity and pitch.”

Zane’s eyes widened. “Proteus hasn’t communicated in any way, as far as we know, with any other Darwin host. Although we are getting a few cases reported of some unintelligible sounds being picked up in a few veemeld children born from Darwin mothers.” He shrugged. “You’re still unique.”

“Yeah,” Julie sighed. “Unique.” She’d heard that before. From SAM. She didn’t tell them about Angel. She glanced briefly at Frank and saw that he was staring at her with dark enigmatic eyes.

“But Julie, you’re unique in a most delicious way,” Zane said with glee. “Those chirping sounds could be like the high-frequency tetanic pulses that activate a particular phase of theta rhythm during veemeld. It’s produced in the dentate gyrus, the part of the hippocampus most damaged in Darwin victims, but enhanced in you. Every part of the brain that was enhanced in you is involved in theta rhythm: the brain stem that transmits signals to the septum, which then activates TR in the hippocampus and the entorhinal cortex.