The Fly House (The UtopYA Collection) (13 page)

The hen beneath Diem's palm opened its eyes and rolled them up, focusing on the human overhead.  Diem smiled at the creature, taking in the unique markings on its neck.  A Samoan fighting dragon, just like Forge.  Diem's tone was gentle and soothing.

"Hey there," he said.  The hen's tongue licked out toward Diem slowly, tasting the heat the man gave off, memorizing it.  "Your name should be Trouble."

"His name should be Four Extra Sacks of
gorne, since that's what I'll pay your House for him," Phuck said.  Diem took his hand from the hen's head.

"Oh no, this hen isn't like the others and you know it," he said.  "This is a Heathen and worth three times as much."

Phuck snorted, making a show of bending to look at the hen's throat, although as the heathen sniffed the Plutian, he snorted.  Phuck skittered back into the trees to avoid being cooked.

"So it is," Phuck said.  "But this tiny hen is not worth three times as much.  Twice as much, maybe..."

"Don't plow the
drait
on me, Phuck.  You know you'll get four times as much since he's also a fighting dragon."

"If you are able to train him."

"When have I not been able to train a dragon?" Diem scoffed and he knew there wasn't one instance that Phuck could name.  

Diem was the only man of all the Houses that had had a flawless record of breaking and training the dragons for the Plutian trade.  That was what made Fly House so prosperous.  It wasn't just that his House met the quota required by Pluto, or that Diem's dragons were so reliable that the dragons produced on Earth were considered prime.    

For his work, Rha Diem was paid with the right to harvest enough gorne to keep his House from starving, and enough ice or fire seeds to last them through the coming season.  There was also an ever-changing variety of tools, necessary for sustaining life functions.  Some seasons there were looms available, or cooking utensils, at other times there were tools for cutting the spindling or the glue for adhering the spindling leaves so the rains or snow or bugs wouldn't get in so easily.  Tools were hard earned and the Plutians made sure that the Houses were not only slow to acquire them, but that tools most certainly broke if a House was showing signs of becoming too independent.  It was rumored that Span's House mates were enlisted for jobs like that.

"You do not need to train a heathen to mate.  They do it on their own," Phuck said.  Diem believed he was trying to sound nonchalant.  Diem knew better.  He'd been duped by Phuck before, but Wind had told him just how valuable the male dragons were.  For all the trouble Wind caused, at least she'd brought him that bit of useable information. 

"We both know the true value of a heathen is not just his ability to mate," Diem said.  "After all, one heathen can mate a dozen swol in less than a fortnight.  The price for a mating dragon is incredible, but we both know that a heathen's unique ability to defend and attack is what makes them so expensive.  If all your gossip is true, the Samoan is the best at fighting the Plutian's Gall dragons."

The Plutian's mouth hole dropped open and shut, open and shut, as he fished for a lie that could smudge Diem's truth.  According to Phuck, Pluto was the only planet in any solar system with Gall dragons, the most deadly dragons in the universe.  Although most Plutians were
skittish of dragons, certain Plutians were born and raised to be fully-suited riders of the dangerous breed.  Many were killed training the beasts and others were experienced riders that the unreliable Galls still turned on.  But Samoan heathens were more reliable and natural predators of the Galls, it could wipe out most or all of Pluto's Gall fleet once it was full grown.  This heathen would be extremely valuable for trade, but Phuck would have to be careful who acquired the dragon, as it could put Pluto in jeopardy. 

Diem paused, his own grin constant and satisfied that he'd pinned the overseer into a very valuable corner. 

"I can increase your gorne for the year..." Phuck bartered.

"I don't want
gorne."

"What else is there for you to want?"

"I want my family's freedom."

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

July 25, 2095

Maeve noticed two weird things when she opened the new door at the farthest point of the Archive:  the room was really long, and the low ceiling was nothing but raw metal girders and hard packed dirt.  It was odd to see an unfinished room in the Archive.  Maeve ducked inside, the loose clods of dirt floor crunching beneath her boots.   

Something rumbled overhead.  Close.  Maeve starred up at the ceiling.  How close to the surface could this place be?  The ceiling quivered.  Then it shook like a damn runaway train was racing over the top of it. 

Maeve shot back to the door, bracing herself in the frame.  The tremor disappeared as fast as it came, but what was left behind drew Maeve back into the room. 

What looked like a row of domed lights, oddly white with scales like albino artichokes, were now lodged in the ceiling.  Maeve
dodged her flashlight beam around the walls, but there were no switches and no wiring.  She was positive the lighting fixtures hadn't been up there a minute ago and since they hadn't, it could only mean that somebody was up there, pounding them down into the unfinished ceiling. 

Right?

But something about the lights sure as hell didn't seem right.  For one, they weren't lit.  They were only an iridescent white color that glowed in the dark room.

Maeve crept across the floor until she was just to one side of the
protruding light.  She pointed her flashlight beam straight up at it.  There were no openings around the edges; the overhead lights were a perfect fit.  She reached up with her flashlight and tapped on the thing.  What she thought would be the glass covering over a light bulb was hard as concrete and maybe thicker than a sidewalk. 

A sidewalk might make sense and Maeve's hope gave a little leap at the thought, but then, what kind of sidewalk had round, iridescent bulbs on the bottom?

The ceiling rumbled again and Maeve skittered back to the door frame.  She held fast as the tremor passed, just as it had the first time.

This room
made her change her whole game plan.  After a few moments, she went out and closed the door.  She made her way back down the twists and turns of silent Archive corridors, no longer searching for the outlying outer doors, but instead, to find Casper Bergen.

***

The last person Maeve was in the mood to hear was Steven, but there he was.

"Where have you been?" H
e rose from a chair in Supply as Maeve entered the room.  More were awake.  Three strangers were gathered at one of the tables, two others hunched under blankets at another.  The blank shock made the new faces smooth when they tipped their face toward her.  Their eyes saw her, but didn't.  They couldn't have been awake very long.

"They're waking up in heaps," Amber said, appearing at her elbow.  She was holding cans of beans and grapefruit sections.

"If heaps are five of them," Steven said, reaching for the cans.  Amy came out of the pantry with the can opener. 

"Five's a heap," she said. 

"Five is a heap." Maeve nodded, distracted. "Where's Casper?"

"He's in the chamber room," Steven said grimly.  "He's trying to wake them up."

"I thought you can't do that?"

"You can't," Amber said.  "Or, at least, you shouldn't.  We came out here so we wouldn't have to listen to it."

"Did he wake them up?" Maeve motioned to the people at the tables.

"No.  They woke up on their own," Amy said.  "The other ones...they're just dying."

Maeve didn't ask any more questions.  She strode across Supply and threw open the doors to the Chamber Room. 

"Casper!" she shouted across the room.  His head poked up from behind one of the chambers, four rows back.

"I'm right here.  Did you need something?"

"What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm trying to expedite the decompression sequence, but the chambers aren't recognizing the code."

Maeve crossed the floor too quickly to be prepared for what she saw.  Some of the chambers were no longer lit inside.  Her gaze was drawn, magnetized, to the dark windows.  The faces inside were not peaceful.  They were anything but.  Maeve spun, seeing the dead all around her.  Six, at least.  

"STOP!" she shrieked as Casper reached for the latch of another chamber.  He froze, looking at her with a mild curiosity. 

"I think I have it, but I have to open them to know for sure," he said simply.  She leapt forward, throwing herself over the top of the chamber.   He'd have to pry her off first.

"These aren't experiments!  These are people!  You are killing people!  Mothers and fathers and daughters and sons!"

Casper stepped away from Maeve with a sigh.

"I understand that, but they might all die if I don't figure out how to decompress them first.  I have to try."

"Trying?  This isn't a quiz where you can erase your mistakes.  You can't just try."

"There isn't anything else I can do.  They're all going to die if I can't figure out how to save them," he said.  "Given the alternative, I believe they would want me to try."

"Who?" Maeve asked.  "The Archive?  The huge staff that isn't here?  Or do you mean the people in the chambers?  Because I'm damn sure I wouldn't have wanted you to experiment on decompressing me, if it meant I ended up dying a horrible death!"

"But you would want it, if I were able to save you," he said, his voice pained.  "It might be their only chance."

"Didn't you tell me they'd wake up on their own when the gases ran out?"

"I may have, but there was new research—right before I became an Experimental.  The Archive was trying to remove the side effects people experienced upon waking.  There were mental issues in every patient who successfully gained consciousness.  The lab found and isolated the chemical in the composition that produced the insanity and we replaced it."  He caught his lip and bit down on it before he began again.  "But the substance that replaced the original chemical also had an effect.  When the gases would deplete on their own in the chambers, it no longer provided a safe decompression.  The gases paralyzed the body and a natural depletion of the gases caused an adverse reaction with the lungs.  The oxygen depletes; the organ slowly collapses..."

"Holy shit!  Are you telling me they suffocate?"

Casper nodded, with a long, miserable blink.  Maeve's eyes rushed over the tops of the chambers that extended off into the dark. 

"You didn't wake up the people who are in Supply now?"

"No.  They woke on their own.  I've administered Oxycort, as we did in the lab, to prevent the reaction, but it's not working.  I've been trying to reenact the waking sequence they just experienced, by comparing the readouts and trying to match the conditions supplied, but there is a problem.  The chamber bugs are tampering with the stabilizing systems."

"Then you have to stop.  You can't keep testing theories," Maeve said. 

"I have to."

Her voice was deep and sure.  "It's not your place to play God."

"You think God would still want me to stand back and let them die, if I might be able to save some of them?  Or would God want me to save as many as I could?  Don't people usually say, even if I could just save one life, it would be worth it?"

The solutions were as right as they were wrong.  Whether they were good or not depended on their outcome. 

"You are not God, Casper," she said.  "Not even one more.  If they're waking on their own, then let them.  But you're not opening even one more chamber.  They have as much of a chance without you as with you.  If they wake or if they die, it's not going to be your fault anymore."

"That's noble, Ms. Aypotu," Casper said.  "But entirely unrealistic.  My job is to help.  To explain.  To run the systems.  That is what I was hired to do, and I need to do my job."

"The people that are waking up, do you even know how that's happening?"

He frowned, pushing up his wire rimmed glasses.  "No," he said.

Maeve stared at his face.  Or, more accurately, the wire mechanism on his nose.  She reached up and snatched off Casper's glasses.

"Metal?" she asked.  At the same time, she pulled up her own shirt, exposing a belly ring hanging from her navel.  She pointed to it.  "Metal?"

Casper's lips made an o.  He felt his face, felt up his pocket, removed the pad of paper and the pen. 

"I was positive I removed those," he said.  "Why didn't I think of it?  Were you wearing any metals?"

Maeve nodded.  "I had my belly ring in my sock."

"You weren't supposed to do that."

"Well, I did."

"Oh my," Casper said.  He flashed around in a circle.  Twice.  Three times, as if his brain was churning and his body had to follow.  "It's the metal then...it's the metal!  How many guests smuggled in metal?"

Maeve smiled.  "Let's go ask them."

But Casper's shoulders fell.  Maeve reached for his sleeve.

"What's the matter?"

"If they smuggled in met
als, then it might be interrupting the stabilizers, but that's not something I can affect from the exterior.  I cannot introduce a metal without compromising the system.  This doesn't change anything."

"There is no more Archive," Maeve said, waving a hand at the dark that stretched out beyond them.  "We've been ditched, don't you see that?  There is no job.  They left us, or maybe they just forgot us."

"Why would you think that?"

"Because I found a room and I swear I could hear something on the surface from inside it."