Accidental Creatures (27 page)

“So you’re Helix,” he said, pulling a chair up to sit across from her, between her and the growth medium.

“So who are you?” she said.

“I’m Nathan Graham, chief administrator of research and development.” He said it like it was supposed to mean something.

“Untie me,” she said.

“Not just yet, Helix. Soon, but not yet. You see I’ve been wondering just how much you know about what you are. How much Hector told you.”

Helix’s hands tightened around the arms of the chair. “He-he said I was adopted.”

“Ah, but by now you know that can’t be true.”

Helix didn’t say anything. She was thinking about the playground at the orphanage, the children taunting her, laughing. But how much did she really remember? A few incidents, the smell of chalk in Ms. Walker’s classroom, but not her room — she would have had a room, and roommates, but she couldn’t recall them, and when she thought of herself, she visualized herself exactly the same size as she was now. With a start, she realized she always had.

“Well let me be the one to tell you, then.” Graham stood and paced behind his chair. “You are a GeneSys research project. Its chief scientist, your Hector Martin, created you. Or at least he created the thing that gave birth to you.”

“What?”

“Your mother. She hatched out of an egg, right in this tank behind me. But you hatched in a full sized vat in the basement of this building. Just think, little Helix, all those months you fancied yourself an orphan girl, rescued by the kindness of Hector Martin, and all along, your real mother was right beneath your feet.”

Helix stared at him wide eyed. “You’re lying.”

“Oh no.” Graham shook his head. “It is not I who have lied to you. Don’t you remember? When you were born your mother and your siblings attacked you and drove you out of their hive. And then, for reasons perhaps not completely comprehensible even to him, Hector secluded you in his apartment, hiding you from the rest of the world.

“I suppose he wanted you to believe you were human, but the memory of your expulsion from the hive was too powerful, so he made up a story to account for your feelings, a story about a poor little orphan girl and the kindly man who made her his daughter.”

Helix felt ill, a sick twisted knotting in her stomach. She held on to it, feeling that if it unraveled, it would unravel everything else with it, and she, and everything she’d ever known, would disappear in a puff of lies. She closed her eyes, and in her mind’s eye she saw those jeering faces, the faces of children contorted with malicious glee, melt away to reveal other faces, faces not gleeful, not malicious, but more terrible still, faces like her own, and purely determined to get rid of her at any cost. A savage rage as hot and sweet as anything she had ever felt rose inside her, a lust to attack someone who was herself. “My mother-” she said. “You said my mother.”

“Yes, your mother. He calls her Lilith, for some reason. You and your kind were designed to clean vats and harvest biopolymers. All the things the vatdivers do. That riot today wasn’t the first time they’ve caused problems for us. We need a more efficient way of producing biopolymer. Unfortunately, you’re not it, either.”

“But I dove without a suit, and I was fine.”

“Yes, yes,” Graham said, waving a hand dismissively. “Your physiology is perfect for the vat environment, but there are other problems, things you don’t understand. I’m afraid it just won’t work out. I never should have allowed Hector Martin such a free hand. Out of deference for his professional stature, I let him do it his way. It’s been a disaster — a costly one. But I wouldn’t have this job if I weren’t able to turn even a catastrophe like this to my advantage.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m reassigning your project. There’s no hope of utilizing you or your kind for industrial purposes, but at least we can learn something from Martin’s mistakes. There are any number of features to you physiology and brain chemistry that may yield fruitful benefits to other lines of inquiry. Of course Martin would never consent to it. He’s too attached to you. He erroneously thinks of you as a person. But there are other researchers on staff here at GeneSys who have no such handicap.”

“You’re going to make me a test subject.”

“That’s about it, yes.”

She tensed with fear. “You can’t do that. I have to — I need -” Words failed her. She strained forward towards the growth medium, her nostrils flared to drink in the smell of it.. “Let me go,” she gritted.

“I’m afraid you have very little say in the matter. You keep forgetting. You’re not human. You have no right to control your own destiny. You are property of the GeneSys corporation, and as such, you will serve its purposes.”

Graham turned to look at the tank behind him. “You want to get in there, don’t you? Worse than you’ve ever wanted to do anything in your brief little life. Well, to show you I’m not such a bad guy, I’m going to let you. And you’ll never have to leave it. Well, almost never. Some tests probably can’t be conducted in there, but most will be.”

Helix shook her head. She wanted to be in growth medium, yes, but not like this. “What do you plan to do to me?”

“Ah,” Graham bent over her, shaking a finger in her face. “Now that would be telling.”

As he straightened up again, four security guards entered the laboratory. Graham turned to face them.

“What are you doing here? I didn’t call for you.”

The guards glanced at one another and flanked Graham. “We’re here for you, Mr. Graham,” one of them said. “We have a warrant for your arrest.”

oOo

Chango paced the narrow confines of her holding cell on the first subfloor of the GeneSys building. The walls and door were clear polyglass with strips of yellow and green adhesive running along them at waist height to prevent you from walking into them. One side of the ten by six room had a formiculate bench built into it which formed itself to her body when she sat on it. There was no toilet. These cells were not designed for long term use. That was a relief. Even with the clear walls, she had trouble keeping calm. She’d never been in a jail before.

Soon they’d take her over to the county precinct, book her and set bail, and then she could call Hyper, and have him come and get her out. She’d probably be back in Vattown by morning. But what about Helix? Chango had been alone in the car with the two guards, and judging from the sea of empty cubicles which surrounded her, she was alone here as well. There was no chance she’d escaped the guards, she’d been surrounded. What did they do with her?

And then there was Benny. He failed to warn them of the approach of security, and obviously it wasn’t because he’d been arrested. And for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out how security had learned they were there. They hadn’t tripped any alarm systems, she was sure of it. After a few hours a pair of women in green and yellow jumpsuits came and unlocked the door to her cell. They were both quit a bit taller than she was.

“Am I going to county?” asked Chango.

The one on the left shook her head silently. She had blond hair bobbed at her chin. The other guard stared at Chango with impartial brown eyes and stepped into the cell, taking her by the arm. They walked her down a long corridor with cells on one side and yellow and green painted cinder block on the other. They were pretty relentless with the color scheme down here. Even the bathroom, when they came to it, was painted green and yellow.

They showed her to a stall and allowed her to shut the door, “Keep your feet on the floor at all times,”

warned Blondie.

They took her back to a cell. She couldn’t be sure it was the same one as before. They all looked exactly alike and she hadn’t counted them on the way out. “When will I be going to county?” she asked them. Brown eyes smiled and shook her head, and Blondie laughed, but neither of them answered her question, they just left her sitting there, and locked the door behind them.

She had a long time to think about things. About Ada and Vonda and Benny and Helix. About Orielle and Hyper and Mavi. And about herself and the many ways in which she’d been blind.

Benny ran up the stairs to his apartment. He went straight to the closet, pulled out a case he’d been keeping for just this occasion, and started throwing his clothes inside. It took him ten minutes to pack clothes, toothbrush, razor and his daddy’s Smith-Corolla machine pistol. He stood in his emptied closet, staring at the small panel in the back where he’d cut through the ancient drywall and later fastened a piece of panelling over the hole. They’d lain there all this time. He’d sealed them in the wall the way he’d sealed his mind against the memory of what he’d done. He wondered if someone would search the place after he’d gone and find them. His secret would be discovered at last. But he’d be far away and someone else by then. He switched on the transceiver at his wrist and called up his numbered account. Benny sat down on the bed, gaping at the pitiful balance glowing in the air before him. There should have been a sizeable deposit made in the last few hours, but it wasn’t there. The arrangements for Hugo’s funeral had only left him with a couple hundred — too little to purchase a ticket to where he was going.

His hands clenched. That bastard Graham had screwed him over. He’d seen to it that Helix was taken into custody by GeneSys security. That was the agreement, but Graham hadn’t paid. Benny stood up and took the pistol from the case, fitted it with a cartridge and stuck it in his waistband. A little visit might jog Graham’s memory.

oOo

Hyper walked through the polyglass doors of the GeneSys building and onto the first floor mezzanine. The ceiling arched high above him, glittering with murals. Lush, red-haired women entwined themselves among eagles and fruitbearing vines, and the pictures were all edged in gold. It was like a palace. Catching himself he looked down again and walked to the information desk. He had decked himself out for the occasion in a lab coat, white shirt and grey dress slacks. The shirt and slacks were part of his funeral clothes, along with the thin black tie throttling his neck. For added effect, he carried a black briefcase with most of the scuff marks wiped off it. But his sartorial efforts were needless. There was no one at the information desk, or anyplace else, at this hour.

He swiped a card through the transceiver mounted on the desktop. It held Hector Martin’s id codes and his authorization for Chango’s release. The system acknowledged him as Martin and he dialed the security desk.

“Security offices,” said a clerk whose blank face appeared hovering above the counter. “Can I help you.”

“I’m here to pick up Chango Chichelski. I have clearance for her release.”

The clerk tapped at his console. “Chichelski. She came in tonight on trespassing charges. You say you have clearance for her release?”

“Yes,” Hyper said, trying not to hold his breath. According to Martin, he didn’t need to have a reason why Chango should be released, all he needed were the clearance codes for such action, and he had those.

“Send it through,” the clerk said.

Hyper allowed himself a long, slow exhalation, and swiped the card through the transceiver a second time.

The clerk scanned the release form, nodded his head and tapped away at his console some more. “She’s being released. Do you want to come down for her?”

Hyper smiled slightly at him. “I’ll wait here,” he said.

Hyper waited, trying not to stare at the vaulting archways or the frescoed ceiling they supported. Instead he turned his attention to the floor, a disc of brass lay set into the marble tile nearby, the figure of a dancing woman all but worn away from its surface by generations of scuffing feet. In a large alcove off the mezzanine and directly opposite the desk where he stood, an elevator pinged open and three figures struggled out. It was a pair of guards leading a man, handcuffed but still struggling, between them. “This is outrageous,” he shouted, his face red with fury. “You have no right to arrest me!

What are the charges?” He swung around, nearly dislodging the guards’ hold on him. They responded by grasping his wrists, which were cuffed behind his back, and bending them up to his shoulder blades.

“Ow! Goddamn it, what do you think you’re doing?” the man fumed, hopping forward in pain. “What is your name?” he demanded of the guard on his right.”

“Marcus Walsh,” the guard told him, grasping his upper arm firmly and leading him towards a door just past the information desk where Hyper stood.

“Well let me tell you something, Marcus Walsh,” said the man, now pretty much allowing himself to be escorted. “You’re never going to work here, or anyplace else again. This will be your last act as an employee of GeneSys, Marcus,” he said with a nasty edge in his voice. The guards took him through the door, and Hyper could hear his voice echoing up the stairs as they led him to security. “You’ve both made a big mistake. Nathan Graham is not to be trifled with in this way, you’ll find out...”

oOo

Chango couldn’t be sure how long she’d been sitting there when a new pair of guards came to her cell, opened the door and escorted her out. Finally, county, thought Chango, but as she stepped through the polyglass doors into the receiving area they moved away from her side. “You’re free to go,” said the blond guard, gesturing at the door on the far side of the room. “Dr. Martin is waiting for you upstairs.”

“I’m free to-Dr. Martin is-Oh.” Brown Eyes handed her backpack and Chango turned to the door just as it burst inward and two more security guards came through, escorting a tall man in a suit. His reddish brown hair was in disarray, flopping in strands across his forehead. The guards took him to the counter, where he fixed the clerk with a steely look. “Will you explain what I’m doing here? On what grounds and whose authority am I being arrested?”

The clerk held his gaze. “You are?”

“You know goddamn well who I am! Just this evening I had a bunch of you people out at Mercy College. What’s the matter with you?”

The clerk shook her head. “Your name?”

“Nathan Graham.”

“Nathan Graham.” The clerk scrolled through an arrest roster. “You’re being held for questioning in relation to a murder charge, Mr. Graham.”