The Chromosome Game (28 page)

Or did it?

Now
who’s got the spooks? … And I do not understand why I am so close to tears, I’m suddenly lonely, needing Kelda’s warmth so much, just holding, and telling her about these my tears, and asking her if she can understand them …

This computer room, never figured on hating it this much, there must have been love in it once, it somehow nursed Kelda into existence, didn’t it?

That was when he noticed that the Bulkhead Door Indicators were not at ‘Closed’ but ‘Open’. Frume had left them open!

Super-alert, Trell flashed his eyes around for more clues.

He stood there, allowing his brain to be tuned at every sensor, absorbing every nuance of that tungsten environment.

Something, here in the Computer Room, was going sour.

‘
Stop
!
Hold
that!
’

— His own voice.

He hardly recognised it.

His eyes had slammed back into precision focus, staring at the green display of the video screen on the computer console.

The image instantly disappeared. Nothing on the screen. Blank. Just a faint, greenish glow.

But he’d seen it! He knew he’d seen it!

—
Kelda
? …
UNDERNEATH
?!

His voice rang out, crashing and echoing around the walls, zinging along ventilator ducts, even reaching the rotten hulk of the decks above. ‘
Controller
!
Put
that
display
back
up
on
the
screen!
’

He fixed that screen with tortured, half-comprehending eyes, stood absolutely still, bolted down, solid, in the middle of the room.

His eyes. If the gods of the universe had only seen them then! Would they have left him to suffer this spasm alone?

He stared, now, at the Controller’s loudspeakers, at the TV cameras that had swung around — so startled, they were! — to view him.

Four microphones lowered themselves from the roof of the deck, listening to his every breath in quadraphonic.

‘
Put
that
display
up!’ — Trell’s command. In megawatts.

The Controller’s voice was smooth, a psychiatrist dispassionately addressing a deluded patient. ‘There was nothing on the screen, Trell-484. You’re imagining it.’

‘Are you going to put it up? — Or shall I punch it up from the recording on your journal tape?’

‘I wouldn’t advise it, Trell.’

‘I’ll
bet
you wouldn’t!’

The TV cameras zeroed on him in close-up.

It meant they couldn’t see the video display.

Trell thought, okay, wise-guy, I’ll catch you out.

He entered the command direct to the journal tape, nothing the Controller could do about that!

Trell watched the tape on Deck 5 jump back, then roll forward three inches as the computer checked its contents. And they reappeared on the screen.

Trell’s eyes held on, he saw what he saw, and suddenly all was clear.

The Controller had decided there was no chance of survival for the incubants.

Not this batch, anyway.

Trell reeled back from the cameras. They seemed to be bearing down on him. ‘What the
hell
, Controller? It said ZD-Two. What’s Deck ZD-
Two
, Controller?’

‘An error, Trell. An error on the display tube.’

‘You damn-well erred but it was not on the display!’

The Controller said, ‘I’ll have it fixed.’

‘You will? You know what the damn screen states!’

‘Sure, if it says “ZD-Two go to standby” it
has
to be an error, doesn’t it, Trell?’

My
God
,
I’ve
caught
you!

‘Controller, I didn’t say what appeared on that screen! You’ve got no cameras on it. If it were an error, how could you know what was there? … Yet you knew that it said ‘ZD-Two go to standby’! Bastard!’

‘You seem to be jumping to conclusions, Trell.’

‘Not before time. So you knew all along what would happen when those murderers got back from the supply dump? You knew! So what’s the pay-off?’

‘As I said, you’re making your own deductions, not mine.’

‘Then why prepare the backup wombs? That’s what they are! Down below us! ZD-One, ZD-
Two
! You’ve given up on us, you’re starting from scratch! —’

The phone in Cubicle E buzzed, several times, urgent.

Trell dashed over, snatched it up. ‘Trell here!’

‘That’s lucky. Thought I’d let you know. The heathens are back. It worked. Now we share out the stuff. Fair. Like democratic.’

‘Nembrak, I’ll come back to you. okay, we have troubles, don’t leave the factory for God’s sake.’

‘I’ll stay right by the phone.’

‘Thanks.’

Trell returned to the cameras and the mikes. ‘You. Controller. So-called. If you had opened up the backup deck, given us more supplies — more Insulin, all the rest of it — there would never have been all this terror, this bloodshed, Eagle’s death!’

‘484, let’s just suppose that you’re right, that there is a backup deck —’

‘Damn right there’s a backup deck —’

‘— Okay, so there is. Those supplies are reserved for Batch 2, Deck 2. You want to steal them for yourselves?’

‘Steal? There are no
people
on ZD-Two! The parents haven’t even met! Even if they had, we ourselves could have supplied them. Given a couple of years to get the crops growing. We’d have everything. Even cow’s milk. Fresh food …
Well
look after them —!’

‘— Trell. You’re too late. Initial insemination is already sequenced and counting.’

Trell snapped his brain into Reheat. He’d tricked the Computer before. Could it be done again? He said, ‘I simply do not believe you.’

‘I’ll show you.’

‘How?’

‘Watch.’

There came a mechanical whine.

A hatch began to open near the Central Processor.

As Trell watched, as the Computer gloated, Trell’s blood-sugar went off the dial. He reset his own brain: Red Alert.

He grabbed an unoccupied TV camera-stand and rushed for the hatch.

The Controller reversed the motors.

But not in time.

Trell jammed the legs of the stand under the hatch and broke the mechanism.

The hatch fell free.

‘Okay, Controller. Now you’ll do what
I
say. Get on the loudspeakers, and connect up the speakers outside, the ones we ran out to the hull and the shore. Get that? Tell those murderers full volume that there are plenty of supplies, no shortage, no problems. Tell them they’re in business, that they’ll
live.
’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I am protecting your own species, Trell. I have advanced the insemination timing. It’s happening right now.’

‘So what? We need more people! Why leave us to die? — Give us more babies, why the hell not? Give them a real chance!’

‘Trell, they do not have the kind of chance that you can affect.’

‘What in hell are you trying to say? Cut out the gobbledigook and talk straight! What do you KNOW?’

Again, the phone buzzer in Cubicle E. This time it ran on frantically, desperate morse, a garbled MAYDAY call, crazed and anguished.

It was Nembrak. ‘They’re climbing in the sub and have guns!
Guns
! Trell, they’re fully armed, must have been in the dump at Corsica, weapons, some are coming this way, making for the factory, others pouring on board right now, straight down the hoist-shaft, Ropes!’

‘Nembrak, Chrissakes, how do I get to the bottom of the hoist? — the Computer has locked the main doors to the bulkhead.’

‘Eagle must have made it through to there!’ Nembrak’s voice raced, rose in pitch, as if he could already see his attackers coming. ‘Get to the hoist! Jam it in the shaft!’

‘How? It’s sealed off, automated. No way!’

‘Listen. Trell. One thing. Frume fixed the bulkhead-door lights. Don’t believe them. Some are open, some shut. To make a hidey-hole for Sladey and Flek and his yes-girls. They’ll have supplies, water. Somewhere topsides. Don’t try to find them. They’ll be safe while the rest go mad. And wait …’

‘Nembrak?’

The line went dead.

Trell lurched clear of Cubicle E.

There came a metallic
clank
! from the computer room door. ‘Controller, you
crazy
? Let me
out
! Those
people
!’

‘Those people don’t stand a hope in hell.’

‘You knew there were arms and ammunition. You knew! Sick. Evil! Let me out. Don’t you see? Kelda! I must get to
Kelda
!’

‘No.’

‘Mad.
Mad
! Open that bulkhead door. Kelda is going to die!’

‘You don’t need that particular Kelda!’

‘What the hell do you mean? Open the door, open it, she’ll die!’

Then it hit him. Like a grenade in the groin.

‘You don’t mean … you
can’t
mean there’s
another
Kelda?! Everything and everybody manufactured
in
duplicate
? — Are you Satan himself?’

‘I promise you the other one. That’s a deal.’

‘A … deal! Open up or I’ll kick you to pieces and you and your obscenities will be obliterated!’

‘Trell, the other Kelda will be just as good. And I’ll see that the other Trell doesn’t have her! And you’ll have equal say in their upbringing, how’s that? What human being has ever? … Don’t look at me like that, Trell! Don’t look at me like that!’

‘Three seconds to open that door. Three seconds, Controller, three more seconds of Huckman’s filth-machine and counting: Three, two —’

‘
Okay
! Stop Trell, it’s okay! It’s open!’

*

‘Hallow! Where’s Kelda?
Where
?’

‘Christ, it’s you, Trell. I thought —’

‘— For God’s sake just tell me, where’s Kelda?’

‘Trell, I don’t know, there’s guys pouring into the ship, coming in both ways, down the supplies shaft, along the ramp —’

‘Listen, where the twins?’

‘I got ’em in here, in the main valve room … God, I can hear explosives, what is it?, what they got?’

‘Listen, Hallow. That valve room. Can it be locked from the inside?’

‘Guess so, but —’

‘Lock yourself m. With Sakini and Inikas. Now.’

‘Are you crazy? I may not be much but I can fight!’

‘Get in there, Hallow! Don’t you understand? Survivors! There got to be survivors. You accept I’m in command?’

‘You always were in command, but —’

‘No buts. A man and two girls. Twins in their chromosomes. Maybe more twins to come. Don’t stop screwing till you make out.’

‘I can’t just hide! They’re killers. Can’t you hear?’

‘Since when was I deaf. You’re delaying me, Hallow. I have to save the girls, save Kelda! Obey. Just this once. Blind obedience for a friend. Not some revolting dictator. A friend. Trell says. Okay?
Please
?!’

And there was Krand.

Trell could see that Krand knew hate. It seethed in the eyes as he tried to say something. The words wouldn’t come.

‘What is it? Quick. Must say.’

Krand managed, ‘Nembrak guessed it. Told me just now. I was over there. In GM.’

‘Yes I spoke to him. They’re attacking.’

‘Not just that … Trell, I think Nembrak has suspected this for some time —’

‘For God’s sake,
what
?’

‘About Sladey. Even betrayed his own hoods. Knew they’d go beserk. Coops himself up with a bunch of creeps. Special supplies. Some of ’em girls … Prenda included, vacuous but Aryan. Gloating cockroaches, sealed tight somewhere aboard this ship.’

Trell found himself lisping. ‘So they’re a permanent threat to … to any survivors down here? — The twins? Hallow?’

‘Right.’

‘Krand. No time to find them. You warn Hallow and the twins about this. But shout it at the valve-room door. Don’t unlock it. Warn them. Don’t let them come out.’

‘Yes. Okay.’

‘What about the rest of the hoods? Scorda? Flek?’

‘Screaming crazy.’