Toxic (64 page)

She spent half that time thinking about what she would reveal and to prepare for the slew of questions. The brother seemed very disciplined to her. In his place, she would have already unsheathed her claws to dig out information on her sister. His eyes shone as he held himself back in front of his… colleagues? Friends? Bosses?

Jon led her through a labyrinth of passageways until coming to a dining hall and then sat her down on a chair beside a table in the middle of the austere room. Richardson sat in front of her. He noticed the bare walls and the faded floor. A horizontal vent which worked as a window let in a diaphanous light.

“You come from the camp, right?”

Elaine told him about the alien attack, the sudden chaos, the terrible battle which followed and then her escape through a tunnel and her desperate race through the Everglades until reaching a marina where she managed to get a speedboat working. The men listened to her story with religious silence. She swallowed.

“I think they got everyone. As for the others, there were so many living dead, you understand.”

Richardson’s face hardened. Jon’s expressed a sort of repressed, controlled anger. He clenched his fists, she noted. Why didn’t he explode?

“She saved my life,” she announced.

“Ummm... sorry?”

“Annie, Jon’s sister. She saved me. She told me to take a message to her brother if I were ever to see him. A personal message.”

All of the faces turned towards Jon, who kept a neutral face. She spotted a bulge in his neck. He was controlling himself in front of them.

“I understand,” Richardson said. “We’re going to leave you alone five minutes.”

Jon took his boss’ seat. His hard eyes responded to the nurse’s feigned sadness. The words he wanted to hear came out of her mouth. This exercise, she had practiced it for her whole career, in front of parents who had lost a child, in front of children whose father or mother had just died, and in front of angry people or people knocked down by life.

Jon remained silent. At the end of the meeting, he got up and left the kitchen without a word.

Elaine went back to her room shortly afterwards, under tight guard. In the darkness of the tiny bathroom, she touched the alien communication device, looking at herself in the mirror. Her reflection had changed. So had she.  

The truck braked and then stopped, its lights off, at the foot of the hill.

Two men got out of it, soon joined by their boss and his right hand man. The latter refused the handkerchief that one of his henchmen offered him.

“You get used to the smell. Look around you; we live in the same shit as them. How many?”

“Almost one hundred fifty.”

“Not bad. I’ll need more ammo. They have automatic weapons and Masters knows how to use them.”

The Reverend lowered his hood. His hair took on an ash color under the moonlight.

“And your attack plan that I’m going to love?”

“Of course, Reverend,” the behemoth bowed respectfully. “You know what I did before, right? I confessed to you when I arrived at the camp. Do you remember?”

“Of course. After the army, you took over your dad’s business. He was a carpenter. A story which I can relate to.”

Dan smiled sincerely.

“Exactly. But I didn’t tell you everything.”

The spiritual leader maintained his gaze, an assured look on his face.

“I know. The family business built for entertainment leaders, for those giant theme parks where our civilization wallowed and gorged to no end. I was wondering if you would tell me about it one day.”

“Forgive me, Reverend.”

“We all have secrets we aren’t proud of. So, my son, how is this going to help you solve the current problem?”

“There was a medieval year, attack a castle, dragons. That’s the rundown. We landed a contract for working replicas of special weapons.”

“Oh. I’m starting to get what you mean by ‘You’re going to like it.’ And you’re right: I love a good show.”

J
ave was dragged away from his peat bath by a call from the Säzkari.

He joined him in his lair, where corpses occupied all the available floating platters. The practitioner was devoting himself to the study of humans, which the emissary considered indispensable in the search for the antidote. There also existed another reason, which was more academic and more terrible in the end.

“Considering that they are a species in danger of extinction, I’m collecting as much biological information as possible and tissue samples which will be transmitted to the Collective for storage purposes. They will enrich the information database on species outside of the Collective.”

“And in several dozen octans, a scientist might just reopen these files out of curiosity or in the context of a research project.”

“I suppose so.”

He closed a vial of samples and then placed it on its stand. He stuck a transparent chip onto the glass. Its memory held all there was to know about this piece of flesh.

“I didn’t make you come here to discuss preservations strategies, but rather your plants.”

“Teeznine seeds.”

“I’m not telling you anything new by saying that they develop in conditions which, on this planet, need to be created under a climatized greenhouse with a pressure differential.”

Jave agreed and gave him a sign, a bow of his head, to skip the lecture. The Säzkari brought him to a neighboring room and in front of a cabinet of hermetically-sealed plastic. His fingers grazed over a sensor and the inside lit up, revealing young seedlings with tiny blue leaves emerging from humid soil.

“According to my analysis, this is a modified variety, which grows quickly. If we consider the number of seeds contained in one packet, there are enough to grow octains of tons of Oksan worms, as this is their favorite food before reaching adulthood. Once they are mature, these extraordinary animals change diet.

“They become flesh-eaters. I haven’t seen them anywhere during my investigations.”

“Field work isn’t my rock,” the mercenary doctor declared. “On the other hand, dating shows that the teeznine was introduced onto this world before the invasion and that is information that I need to take to the Primark.”

Jave didn’t object, even if he didn’t like it. The Säzkari had to fulfill his obligations, or else Naakrit could decide that he no longer had any use for him. Before taking his leave, the practitioner held him back, motivated most likely by curiosity.

“Why Oksan worms?”

“It’s the elegant solution to a complex problem. The antidote is not the only challenge we’ll have to face to restore the commercial value of the human species.”

Negotiation implied compromise. Those who denied this basic principle didn’t prosper within the Collective at all, or even outside of it, Naakrit thought, watching the earthly clouds from the hallway of his tamer ship. The more a market developed, the more stakes were intertwined, with an effect on the totality of actors along the business chain and multiplied pressure on its main link, which was in this case, him.

Customers were asking for too many guarantees. The Primark had anticipated the development of contractual conditions and of course, as an expert, had expected them to be submitted to him several times by the Merchant Princes before accepting them, not without in return having formulated his own preoccupations. These perpetual returns came to their end once all the parties were satisfied. That could take a long time, sometimes until a breaking point.

He watched the two dignitaries from the GenoSaran consortium talking in front of the window. Their slender shadows stood out against the background of shimmering iridescent white and blue. They gave an impression of lightness and even apparent fragility with their long limbs and narrow torsos, far from the massive and more compact appearance of a reptilian trooper. The Combinate had presented them as logistics technicians, in charge of examining the possibility of an increase in delivery pace. The one in charge was called Delko.

He moved towards his command chair with an aerial grace.

“A pretty planet, mainly aqueous. Did you ever think of putting up a base on its natural satellite?”

The GenoSaran pointed to the golden disk above the line of the horizon.

“I gave priority to proximity and speed of access to the operation zone. I need to optimize my resources for transport and troop movement.”

“I imagine. Our consortium uses vessels four times the volume of the megatransporters that you rent, delicate ships to operate near gravitational pulls.”

Too quick of an acceleration could break these fragile giants with the force exerted on their structure. Naakrit had already witnessed to that.

“We’re not yet at that stage, engineer Delko. This discussion will come at a later time.”

“Of course, Primark Naakrit.”

The leader of the mercenaries had allowed them to carry out their study, but not to disembark with their enormous ships and impose their point of view. It was out of the question. Naakrit protected his discovery, ready to defend it with the rage of a female whose job is to chase away any menace to her eggs.

The tamer ship locked on at the space station and after a brief rest they took a T-J, which spiraled in the direction of the upper atmosphere. Very quickly, the ship reached its destination and then its dock at the top of the Dubai tower. The visit was non-stop, under the pressure of a Primark who desired to be done with his obligations as fast as possible. The GenoSarans were polite and patient. In reality, the military aspects weren’t of much interest to them. In plain view of the operations chief, Delko leaned his long neck.

“We would like to approach and observe live humans.”

“I can’t authorize you access to the domes for hygienic rules in force, without taking into account that you have been in contact with contamination sources recently.”

“I didn’t explain properly,” The GenoSaran continued. “We would like to see them in their natural habitat. There must still be pockets, places where they still move around freely. A city would be ideal.”

The occasion seemed perfect to him. The faster they got what they wanted, the faster they would leave.

“We can arrange an expedition to the ground. I would, however, be forced to provide you with an escort for your protection. Even conquered, Earth remains a dangerous planet.”

“That goes without saying, Primark. We appreciate that you are granting us our request. Your understanding will be reported to our authorities.”

Naakrit’s tongue shot out and retracted in satisfaction. He excused himself to address his operations chief.

“Find Jave. I need him.”

The Lynian joined Naakrit while refreshing his memory on the GenoSaran consortium. The Combinate made deals with them for the transport of large volumes, but also exchanged information and experience on retro-bio-engineering, two excellent reasons to find them here.

As emissary, he could escape from the mercenary’s orders and simply refuse to take the honored guests to someplace on the planet so that they would take notes for their masters. However, as a member of a multi-planetary Combinate with complex internal politics, that would be a poorly thought-out gesture. Naakrit got annoyed with his cold attitude.

“I know that you’re not obliged to yield to this sort of request.”

“As compensation for my services as a tour guide, I would like you to tell me what Kuhn discovered in Woomera.”

The Primark decoded the message.

“I didn’t have the intention of hiding this information from you, but we had to go through preliminary verifications.”

“The reason for which officer Kuhn went back there.”

“Yes.”

“So, I’ll take the GenoSarans onto the planet and we’ll take a detour through Woomera.”

Naakrit whistled in approval.

“One more thing. My Säzkari sent me a report on teeznine seeds. You will agree with me when I say that they didn’t get here on their own, or at least not any more than the Kroon nanotubes did.”

Jave’s nasal vents quivered.

“Absolutely.”

“I’m going to inform officer Kuhn of your pending visit.”

Jave followed the Primark, who presented him to the specialists from the consortium before leaving them.

“A Lynian here!” Delko said with surprise. “I would be very interested in your analysis of this border world. How long have you been a part of this lucrative business?”

The GenoSarans also surrounded themselves with linguistic precautions, thus observing one particular rule of the Collective: never offend an interlocutor.

“A fair few octo-diems already. There’s a lot to do here.”

Time flew by, sand between their fingers, to the point of losing track of it. Hidden away in an inner pocket, a rootlet in contact with the relay sent him an activation signal. The human, Jave thought. It was impossible to get away and leave Delko and his assistant in the middle of the operations room. Why would she be contacting him right now?

“How many non-infected humans live on Earth?”

If she was calling, she had made a discovery, he told himself. Delko leaned his head.

“A problem?”

The Lynian got back on track.