Accidental Creatures (8 page)

“She is not, Pele,” said Chango, and then to Benny, “she’s not.”

“Well you said her father worked for them,” Pele noted.

“That’s not the same thing is it? Besides, I was speculating.” She looked at Benny again, “She’s a sport.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s what I heard.”

“What did you do, Hyper,” Chango turned on him, “broadcast it?”

“No,” he protested, “I didn’t know it was supposed to be a secret, that’s all.”

“Yeah, I mean, what’s the big deal?” said Pele.

“I guess,” she said warily, “It’s just that she’s understandably timid around people, Benny, and when she finally comes out of Mavi’s house, I don’t want people staring and talking about her.”

“C’mon, Chango,” Benny said, “This is Vattown, everyone stares, and everyone talks about everyone else.”

“Yeah, but she doesn’t know that.”

“Then she’ll have a chance to find out.”

“C’mon Benny, at least let her get her bearings. Be cool when I bring her around. No sport jokes, okay?

And see if you can’t get Vonda and Coral to be a little less their usual selves.”

“Oh, you don’t ask for much.”

“You know you can influence them, if you want to.”

Benny raked his hands through his thick hair. “But at what cost?” he cried, looking beseachingly at the ceiling.

“Benny,” a young woman with straight brown hair falling to her shoulders walked up to him. Her eyes darted over to Chango for an instant, and then flickered away with a dismissive toss of her head.

“Orielle’s coming later tonight, want to go in on a liter?”

“Sure, Vonda,” he said, “Mind if I pay you Monday?”

“Yeah, I can cover it until then. Hey, did you see next month’s production run? They had it posted this afternoon. They must be crazy if they think we’re gonna get all that fiber grown with just the people we have now.”

“Overtime,” said Benny.

Vonda made a face, “How much overtime do they expect us to work?”

“Hey, it’s time and a half.”

“Yeah, it’s also prolonged exposure.” During the course of the conversation, she had slowly turned so that her back was to Chango, who still sat there, staring at her. “Hey, there’s Val, c’mon, he’ll buy us drafts,” she took Benny by the arm and they drifted away. Chango watched them disappear into the crowd and then she turned around, resting her elbows on the bar.

“Shit,” said Hyper, “I can’t believe you guys still aren’t talking, after all this time.”

“What do we have to talk about?” asked Chango, and she drank her beer.

“You used to be best friends.”

“Yeah, well, things change, don’t they?”

“You don’t still seriously believe she falsified Ada’s tests, do you?”

Chango shrugged and shook her head, “Not really. I don’t know. I know Ada didn’t dive blasted, that’s all.” She drank her glass empty, set it back down on the bar, and left. oOo

For three days Helix sat in “the pink room”, as Mavi and Chango called it. She would have been bored out of her mind if it weren’t for Chango, who remained at her bedside most of the time, playing cards with her and regaling her with stories of the comings and goings of Vattown.

“I saw Hugo today,” Chango said, shuffling the cards. “He lives with Benny, an old friend of my sister’s. She and Benny and Hugo were in a dive team together years ago. Now Hugo has vatsickness. He’s been off work for months. Benny and Hugo are lovers, or at least they were. I don’t think Hugo is up for much but lying in bed nowadays. Mavi sent me over there with some morphine for him. That’s about all he consumes now, morphine and water, maybe a little soup. But today he was having a good day. He was sitting up, and we watched soap operas on the holonet, the interactive ones. I asked him if he’d like to play a character, but he just wanted to watch.”

Helix looked up at the mention of soaps. “Did you see ‘We Are the World?’”

Chango wrinkled her brow. “Is that the one where the two power bitches are fighting it out over this woman whose husband died?”

“That’s it. My character — I mean Natasha, that’s the one I like to play — she’s going on trial for murdering the husband. Did you see her? What happened? Have they set the date for the trial yet?”

Chango shook her head. “Wow, you’re really a freak for that show, aren’t you? We only caught the end of it. Something about a couple stranded on an island in the South Pacific.”

“Carmen and Peter. They’re boring.”

Hugo likes Tears of Joy.”

Helix made a face.

“Hey, I think they’re all stupid. I mean they may have all those fancy settings and stuff, but as far as pure drama goes, they can’t hold a candle to what goes on around here. Why just last week Coral found out that her boyfriend Val was sleeping with her best friend Yolanda. She caught them at it when she went to Yolanda’s house to drop off some blast for her. She was mad at first — she kept the blast - but now they’re thinking of making it a threesome.”

Helix raised her eyebrows. “I guess you have a point.”

“You bet. Don’t worry, pretty soon Mavi will let you out of bed, and you can meet some of these people. It must be really boring for you, stuck in here all day and night.”

“Yes.” Helix admitted. “But maybe its just as well. I’m not sure I want to meet anyone.”

“Oh come on. You can’t stay in here forever.”

That was true. She hadn’t really thought about what would happen when Mavi let her out of here. She thought of Night Hag, who had said almost the same thing to her the day she left Hector’s. “Do you think you could borrow a transceiver from somebody? I have a friend on the holonet. I’d like to contact her.”

“Oh,” Chango said, surprised. “Well, the only people I know who have a transceiver are Benny and Hyper. Benny would lend you his, but Hugo uses it, and I wouldn’t want to ask. Hyper... well he uses his constantly, but I’ll make a strong case for you. Maybe if it’s just for an hour or so.”

“She always takes my calls. It wouldn’t take long.”

“I’ll try.”

oOo

The following afternoon, Chango came into the pink room with a self-satisfied smile and something hidden behind her back. “Catch,” she said, tossing a headset transceiver at her. It landed on the bed, and Helix picked it up. “Thanks. Did you have trouble getting it?”

“No, but he made me promise that when you get out of bed, he’d be the first person to meet you.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll like Hyper. He’s a sport, like us, and he makes a lot of cool things.” Chango handed her the wrist keypad that went with the headset and stood with her arms at her sides, seemingly at a loss. “I guess I’d better leave you alone, so you can call your friend.”

“Thanks.”

“I promised Hyper I’d have it back to him tonight.”

“That’s okay.”

Chango left, and Helix placed the transceiver on her head, pulled the imaging lens down over her right eye and dialed Night Hag’s number.

“Helix! Where have you been? You haven’t been answering my messages,” said Night Hag, still using the construct she’d had the last time they talked. Hyper had the transceiver set to visuals, and in her haste, Helix had forgotten to check it. She was sitting up in bed, and had made no attempt to cover up her arms. It was just as well, she thought, she was going to have to start letting people see her. But Night Hag didn’t pay much mind to her appearance. Instead she peered at the peeling walls behind her. “Where are you?”

“That’s why I called. After the last time we talked, I left Hector’s apartment. I’m in Vattown now.”

“Where they make the biopoly. Good. That’s good. Have you found a job yet?”

“Not yet. I — I ran into some trouble. Some men tried to rob me. There was a fight. I got injured.”

Suddenly Night Hag’s eyes focused on her. “Are you alright? How badly were you hurt?”

“I’m okay, still pretty sore, but okay. I had a concussion, some cracked ribs, and a knife wound.”

“Who did that to you?” she asked sharply, as if she would kill whoever it was, as if she could.

“I don’t know. Just some guys, I guess.”

Night Hag stared at her. “You don’t know them?”

“No! I was just walking and...”

She took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re alright now.”

“Yes. I-someone found me. Her name is Chango. She’s a sport like me. she saved my life. She brought me here to her friend’s house. They’re taking care of me.”

“That’s good.” She paused, and then added, “Those men that attacked you? Did you fight them?”

“Oh yeah. There were three of them, but one I bit pretty bad, in the neck,” she said, and pointed at her teeth, still surprised that Night Hag had made no mention of her appearance.

“I’m glad,” said her friend. “People shouldn’t want to hurt you. But for some reason, sometimes they do. When it happens, you must fight them.”

Helix didn’t know what to say to this. “At least I’m with friends now,” she said at length.

“And I’m proud of you for leaving Hector. It couldn’t have been easy for you. Just don’t think that because you were attacked, you made a mistake. There was nothing for you in that apartment.”

“Except my transceiver, and Hector’s money. I didn’t take anything with me when I left.”

Night Hag waved one hand dismissively. “Things. Things you can buy after you find work. Are you going to be a vatdiver?”

“I don’t know,” Helix shrugged. “I hadn’t thought about it, but I’m going to need some kind of job.”

“Maybe your friends can help you.”

“Maybe. But jobs are hard to find, and they’ve already done a lot. Chango borrowed this transceiver from a friend of hers, so I could call you.”

“Everybody doesn’t have a transceiver?” Night Hag looked genuinely shocked. Helix laughed at her naivety. She had always been the wise one, the experienced one. “No. Everyone does not have a transceiver.”

Nathan Graham walked to the elevators, suncells in fan-shaped wall sconces brightening at his approach, signalled by his tread on the bioweave carpeting. It had taken research and development years to come up with a bacteria that would put forth a spectrum of light even approaching sunshine. These were the latest achievement, and their bright warm light was gradually spreading through the consumer market, edging out incandescent and fluorescent bulbs.

The elevator doors were covered in etched brass, a holdover from the original decor. Much of the building had been remodeled repeatedly in order to showcase the latest developments in GeneSys materials, but they saved these — oriental etchings of birds and flowers intermixed with geometric designs — and the murals on the first floor.

The doors parted and he stepped inside. “Good morning, Mr. Graham,” said the elevator, and Graham rode it down to the tenth floor. In the lobby of the research and development department he asked a vending machine for an apple juice and swiped his card through the pay slot. He downed the juice in one long gulp, and tossed the little can into the welcoming mouth of a motion sensitive trash canister. Martin’s lab was a large, white tiled affair, strewn with instruments. Martin and his two remaining lab assistants were there; Slatermeyer, a tall, anemic-looking fellow with sandy, badly cut hair, and Greenfield, shorter and stockier, his dark hair receding at his temples. They looked at him like a trio of startled rabbits.

Graham walked along the counter-lined perimeter of the room, glancing at this instrument and that. Everything was gleamingly spotless. Graham had no doubt that Martin had spent the better part of the week preparing for this visit. He had probably also rid the lab of anything he really wanted to see.

“The biopolymer being produced in test vats shows some remarkable properties,” said Martin. “Look at these electron holomicrographs.” He walked to the holomicroscope. In its viewing platform rested a shallow pan containing a vibrant blue strip of biopoly. He fiddled with the dials of the scope until a three-dimensional holographic schema of the biopoly’s cellular matrix appeared in the air; vivid green, yellow and blue shapes representing mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum and secretory granules.

“It’s an aromatic amino acid with a fullerian side group — a bucky ball with trapped silver ions,” said Martin enthusiastically. “It’s extremely versatile and has a high rate of synthesis.”

“What?”

“It grows fast,” said Slatermeyer.

Was that all? Graham rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“And that’s not all,” interjected Greenfield, “Because of the trapped silver ions, it conducts electricity very efficiently, making it quite suitable for a range of applications where other biopolys have been ruled out.”

Hector walked over to the biostat cabinet and took out a tray. “Here, feel it,” he lifted out a handful of the stuff and held it out to him.

Gingerly, reluctantly, Graham took the stuff in his hands. It was faintly warm, smelled yeasty and felt smooth, but what struck him most about the stuff was its color. A bright, deep blue that almost seemed to glow. It had a power of its own, that color. It was the color blood would be, if blood were blue, and there was something at once beautiful and repellant about it.

Graham handed it back to Hector. “Well,” he said, clapping his hands together, “what say you show me the vats where this miracle material is being produced.”

Hector glanced at his two assistants, and then back to Graham. “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

“Impossible? Nonsense, I want to see the vats now. All this lab business is very well, but you must admit, it’s a bit off goal for the project. Remember the project? It wasn’t to make new biopolys. It was to cut labor costs. Now take me to those vats.”

“We can’t,” said Hector. “We’re in the middle of an isolation study. Any interference now would put the project back months.”

“An isolation study? What for?”

“To determine the long range impact on productivity.”

Graham gritted his teeth. “When will the test be finished?” he asked. Martin hesitated. Graham could see him thinking it through before he answered, “By the end of the month.”

“The end of the month. And you’re absolutely sure it’s necessary.”

“Oh yes, if we’re going to provide you with any figures at all concerning long term production levels.”