Ribofunk (9 page)

Mom had her back to me, blocking sight of Charmaine. When Mom turned and stepped aside, I could see what had made her roughride and chide so snide.

Charmaine had added feelers to go along with her old familiar antennae. And a row of itchy, twitchy buglegs running down each side of her torso. Her clothing had been grommetted to accomodate the new members.

“Oh, no, Charm,” I said. “I thought you had given up on the Roaches? …”

My sister had a perez-pretty face, despite the wispy, feathery, living proteoglycan antenna-rods projecting out a good meter from her forehead, iridescent black. But now, messed up with grief, anger, fear, and tears, her face looked really bug-ugly.

“I’ll never give up on the Roaches! I was just waiting to add more mods until I got enough eft!”

Mom burst in. “Tell your brother how you got two thousand NU-dollars! Go ahead, tell him!”

Charmaine straightened up defiantly. “Just like you, Ma. I won it at the cats.”

Mom glared at me for support. “You heard her. She stole her own mother’s stake for the track—my one little luxury—and bet it all on one race. She, jeune fille estupida, who couldn’t tell a cheetah from an ocelot!”

“I won, didn’t I? And I paid you back double.”

“But look how you spent the rest! Mutilating your beautiful body like that!”

“It’s my thorax, and I’ll do what I want with it! Besides, you’re one to talk! You ain’t hardly no Miss Baseline Betty yourself!”

I realized that there was something different about Mom that hadn’t registered in the confusion till now. She had had her chocolate complexion spotted-dotted like one of the racing cats she loved. And translucent feline whiskers bristled around her kisser.

“Pah! My little vanity is like my memere’s old-fashioned eyeshadow compared to your craziness. And besides, the belle gato is a mammal like us. But roaches—”

That was the match to Charmaine’s fuse.

“Go ahead!” she exploded. “Say it! Roaches are bugs! Well, you’re not insulting me by saying that. Bugs are glorious! They’re not our inferiors, they’re our superiors! Bugs were here long before mammals, and they’ll be here long after we kill ourselves off! I’m proud to be a Roach! And as soon as I get some more money, I’m gonna get a full carapace! Neurocrine and Berlex are in a price war, and shells’re getting cheap as prostaglandins! Weevil has one, and it’s beautiful!”

Mom wailed. “Ai-yi-yi! Damballah, Erzulie, and Jesus save me from this disrespectful girl!”

All of a sudden, my legs felt like puddin’. I had heard this whole argument a hundred times before. Their life was on replay, mine was on delay. How long was I going to be trapped while these two yapped? Didn’t they see I had my own probs that made my head throb? I was trying to make something of myself after a bad start, but these two fighting were ripping out my heart.

I sat down all dreary-weary in a chair, and my eyes fell on a fishbowl tabletopped near there. In it swam four flaking trilobites. The sight of the watery wigglers reminded me of my job, and I shot to my feet.

“Listen, you’re not going to solve anything by yelling at each other. That’s no way to act for a daughter and mother. Ma, you and Charmaine both need to get your fingers off the hot buttons. What’s done is done and should be forgotten.” I had a sudden inspiration. “I’m going to take Charmaine to work with me. We can talk about things and see what we see. I’ll bring her back tonight, and we’ll all have a meal together.”

Mom smiled. “You were always such a good boy, Corby. I knew I could count on you to talk some sense into la cucaracha here.”

Charmaine stiffened. “Ma, I’m warning you—”

I grabbed Charmaine by the elbow, brushing one of her new abdominal legs, which jerked reflexively. I hustled her out the door.

“I’ll make your favorite, Corby,” Mom called out down the hall. “Grilled mammoth steaks!”

We were on the train heading crosstown before Charmaine would talk to me.

“Mammoth steaks!” she huffed. “I’m lucky if she nukes me a lupinovine chop!”

I felt myself relax a little, the annoying rhymes retreating into some unprobed lobe. At least Charmaine wasn’t going to stick to her sullen silence. Maybe there was a chance to straighten things out.

“You’ve got to let up on Ma, Charm. You know she’s not exactly the domestic type. And life’s been hard for her since Dad died. You shouldn’t block her receptors about her gambling, for instance. It’s really the one pleasure she’s got these days.”

Charmaine stiffened, and her new abdominal additions began to wave like the legs of a stepped-on roach. It seemed she didn’t quite have full control of them yet.

“What about me? Ain’t I nothing to give her some pleasure? Why can’t she take some interest in me and my life, huh? She’s always praising you to the skies. But me—all I get is her gleet and pus.”

“Charm, there’s no need to nasty. Look, Ma likes me better because somehow, I think, I remind her of Dad. And she’s proud of me because I got out of the projex. Not that this job is anything much, believe me. As for why she keeps catalyzing your leukotrines, it’s—”

“I know, I know, it’s the Roaches. Well, I got news for you and Ma. I am not a larva any more, I’m an adult. And my mind is made up. The Roaches are the best thing that ever happened to me. Once a Roach, always a Roach. And pretty soon, I’m gonna be a Roach all the way! And it won’t be any too soon. Because big things are gonna happen any day now, and the Roaches—”

Charmaine stopped herself.

“What? What kind of sneaky-freaky things are the Roaches up to?”

Folding all eight of her arms—two baseline and six add-ons—across her body, Charmaine clammed up, and nothing I said would get her to reveal anything further.

When the train pulled into our stop, we got in line to get off and found ourselves behind a Visible Man. The fright-sight of all his working viscera through his transparent gut-bucket made me want to hurl my cereal.

What a mayday payday this was turning out to be!

Aboveground, we stood for a zepto on the tree-green lakeshore. A tart breeze flustered our hair. Sunlight played on the clean waters of Lake Mitch. Not far from the transit stop loomed the headquarters of the Eater Corps, a subdivision of the GLB Authority. Toward this, Charm and I made our way down paulownia-shady pedpaths.

EC HQ used to be the Shedd Aquarium, back in the last century. But like all old-time zoos and such, with the advent of splices the Shedd had quickly gone out of business. With transgenics of all types—many of them more exotic than anything nature had ever produced—visible and touchable (even, in the case of a Hedonics Plus product, beddable), to be found in street, home, and store, public interest in seeing dull caged specimens had nulled out. All the retro exhibitors had quickly sold their stock as raw lab material and folded. And as far as a zoo’s utility as a repository of endangered species went—well, the Great Restockings had ended that use.

But this old-time tourist diz still retained some connection to animals, which I frequently had cause to think on.

At the door I met up with one of my proxies and fellow Eater Feeders, Sharpy, who seemed in a bit of a flushed rush.

“How’s Ozzie this worn morn?” I asked a bit nervously.

Sharpy’s face was a mass of long drooping folds and corrugated wrinkles, like his doggie namesake. Even when happy, he looked doomy-gloomy. And as now, when actually preoccuplexed, he could make a technogoth resemble a gameshow vannawhite on Pollyannamide.

“The Khan has me scared. He’s just not his old apoptositic self. He’s given all of us the day off to attend an official blyfest over in the Loop. Some kind of sensitivity training in how to deal with Anti-Em demonstraters. Now I ask you, would the Khan we know and detest shed a yocto- tear about the feelings of some friggin’ rifkins?”

Inexplicable as Ozzie’s actions were, they seemed good news for a change. At last on this crazy day, something was finally going my way, and I felt zetta-okay. Until Sharpy’s next words.

“Except you. He’s been asking everyone if they’ve seen you yet. Seems he has a special chore just for Cadet Corby.”

“Mighty Ogun! Now my ass is grass, no sass!”

“Not necessarily. Remember, I told you, he’s not acting like the old Khan. Maybe he’ll go easy on you. But you’d better get in there soon.”

“Right. Thanks for the warning, Sharp.”

“No skin off my dewlaps. Hey, who’s the Love Bug? Want to spend the day with me, Cricket?”

During our conversation, Charmaine had stood in bored silence, wiggling her new legs in a programmed sequence to gain greater control over them. (I hoped she was remembering to take her cecropins.) But now she bristled at Sharpy’s remarks.

“Eat pyrethrum, chordate!”

“Charmaine, please. She’s my little sister, Sharp, and she’s not in a good mood today. I apologize for her.”

“No mammal has to apologize for a Roach!”

“Put it in a vacuole, Charm. Listen, Sharpy—I’ll see you later. I’d better go take my bitter meds from the head.”

I hauled Charmaine along to the office of Cengiz Ozturk.

In the anteroom, I pushed Charmaine down onto the Biospherics slouch-couch. “Stay here. We haven’t finished talking about the probs of our little germline yet. I’ll only be a zepto—I hope.”

“What am I gonna do while I wait?”

“I don’t care if you count your hairs. Raster some vid, you selfish kid. Can’t you tell I’m gonna catch hell?”

This rough talk—which her loving brother never used toward her—seemed to waken Charmaine to the variety of my anxiety, and she sulkily picked up a pair of retinal painters provided for waiters.

“Olivetti Eye Blasters,” she sarcastically intoned. “These are shit.”

The expression on my face caused Charmaine to shut up and don the glasses.

I entered the zig-zaggy light-trap to Ozturk’s inner sanctum.

Cengiz Ozturk was a veteran of the Last Jihad. An officer of the secular Turkish government, he had been among the last evacuees from Istanbul during its seige by the Jihad’s shahada-sicarios and consequently had caught the worst of their assault, taking a hit from a bizarre new weapon.

There used to be a basal disease called xeroderma pigmentosum. Those who had it were so sensitive to sunlight that an average day in the pre-ozone-hole sun would give them cancers and other cyto-malfunctions.

Ozturk had been hit with a designer infective agent based on this retro disease. Now it lurked ineradicable in his soma.

A few photons at the frequency of visible light impinging on his skin today would be enough to trip a cascade of death-agonists throughout his body, resulting in ayotta-painful death.

He had been med-evacked in a light-tight homeopod and installed in an null-photon underground facility, where bonestretchers and cellsmelters could investigate his condition. But in the end all that could be done for him was to adapt his vision to infrared and find him an alpha-symbland desk job.

Which had turned out to be director of the Eater Corps, my boss. And needless to say, this whole experience had left him a less-than-cheerful sort.

As I felt my way down the last zag, I braced myself for the Dow-Hughes shrink-wrap that was the final safety barrier between Ozturk and the world.

I met the bedsheet of pliable film face on and pressed ahead. I really hated this. The semiorganic film wrapped itself around me from head to toe, sealing shut, pinching off behind, more drawn from the dispenser and ready for the next entrant. Mouth- and nose-holes opened of their own accord. My useless eyes remained hooded.

Now I was no danger. Had I been carrying a weapon, I couldn’t have reached it beneath the wrap. Even if I had a flashlight in hand, ready to fire, the film would have frustrated it by invading the mechanism or reflexively immobilizing my twitchy trigger finger. Sure, there were sophisto ways around the wrap, but who really wanted to smoke an old soldier like Ozturk anyhow? The extra security was just paranoia and status-flash on his part.

I stopped just inside the door. “Uh, Captain Ozturk? It’s me, Cadet Corby.…”

The room was flooded with low-freak illuminating rads, and I could almost feel Ozturk sizing me up with his altered eyes as I stood here blind. What I put up with for this job! But it was still better than the projex—or so I told myself.

At last Ozturk spoke. His voice sounded funny, mechanical almost, and I could see what Sharpy had meant about his not being his old self.

“Cadet, I need your to help conduct a small experiment. You are aware that the terrorist splice known as Krazy Kat has been reported in the vicinity?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I’m very concerned that he not subvert our Eaters. Accordingly, I’ve redesigned their dietary leash. I’d like to run a field trial before switching over entirely, however. Make sure the NOAEL is as simulated. Please take this sample and feed it to the Rivermouth Colony.”

I extended my hand slowly, so as not to trip the wrap’s freeze-reaction. Into my outstretched palm was placed a packet.

“Do you wish to dataglove the leash’s new molecular structure?” Ozturk asked.

“I’m soriy, sir, I can’t use datagloves. It’s my disability—”

A strange satisfied tone crept in Ozturk’s voice. “Oh, of course, I should have remembered. Very well, Cadet, that will be all.”