Chaos Cipher (21 page)

‘
Good grub,’
Dak winked as he fished through his lane and checked his basket,
‘I’ve got zucchini, corn, and okra and mustard seeds.’

‘
Great.’ Said
Kyo.

‘
Good!’ Dak
clapped his hands and stood away from the cultivation table and
pressed a button to lower the UV lamp strip again.

‘
We
done?’

‘
Not yet.
Let’s get over to the higher light-level tables,’ Dak pointed, ‘we
still need eggplant and tomato.’

The aquaponic
greenhouse was a large area, partially open and partially covered
depending on which vegetables or mushrooms were being grown and for
what purpose. The green house was organised by the local people of
East B’ One and by the chefs, it was a space where anybody could
grow whatever they wanted, and extended to outside areas where the
natural sunlight was.

The covered
areas were smaller. This space was generally controlled not for
food consumption but medicinal and operated by clinical departments
in the hospital network. Many botanical professionals arranged
meetings at the hospital to schedule what to grow in advance.
Humidity levels and temperature varied on each segment of the green
house. Seeds and grains and roots and potato were stockpiled for
emergencies, seed storage was a dark room filled with cabinets and
trays with label tags barcoded for ocular contacts to
register.

Kyo loved the
spice rooms for the smell and the cool air. After helping Dak pick
a mature eggplant they left the aquaponic centre and made their way
towards Minerva Meadows. Kyo could already hear the music and he
could already smell the grilled vegetables and the soups. He heard
the poets pontificating on the existential meaning of being, or
their mockery of the Atominii’s hypocrisy, or of Pierce Lewis and
his echelon of debonairness only making an appearance should the
city roll out a red carpet for him.

They chortled
and guffawed.

‘
Come down to
the people,’ one poet lampooned, ‘join humanity Mister Lewis, if it
pleases you my Lord. We are ready and waiting, our compassion to
accord. We have for you the greenest plants on record.’

And there was
a cheer as the poet pulled a long white paper roll from behind his
ear and wedged the blunt end into his lips and one of the listeners
jumped up with a lighter in hand to ignite the marijuana joint for
the poet.

‘
Do you think
we give Mister Lewis a hard time?’ asked Kyo.

‘
Oh hell
yeah,’ Dak chuckled with his wicker basket under arm. ‘He brings it
on himself. We keep reaching out and he keeps pushing us away. He’s
only happy when he’s using our democratic channels to voice some
trivial bullshit about noise pollution or immigration.’

‘
Why do you
think he stays here if he doesn’t like it?’ Kyo asked. ‘Can’t he go
somewhere else?’

‘
He could go
back to the Atominii,’ Dak said. ‘I think Enaya Chahuán once
proposed to fund the journey for him, but he turned it
down.’

‘
Why?’

‘
Pride,’ Dak
shrugged. ‘He wants to believe he can reverse things back to the
way they were before the revolution.’

Kyo landed
his basket on a flimsy looking table in the camp and the chefs
began rooting through the collection and collaborating and planning
what they were going to do. The chefs always liked it when Dak
brought Kyo. Some of the younger men and women of the group wanted
to inspire him to cook and get creative, while some of the older
ones wanted him to taste their long cultivated secret recipes, many
of which he loved. For the odd recipe he didn’t like, Kyo politely
tried to suggest the flavour was an acquired taste, without hinging
too much on hurting the creative motivation of the person. It was
always a delicate balance, he realised, since the artist is usually
a sensitive soul. At least, that’s what Pania had told him. It
wasn’t long before the night festival was underway. From all around
the city they flocked to the meadows. People had built all kinds of
shelters, from canvas tepees decorated with ink to tents and huge
structures arranged with sound systems. There were stages with
musicians practicing their performances, dancers and trapeze acts
draped in long silk ribbons that hung from high supports. Kyo
wondered by cabins that were once part of several aeroplanes
dissected and transformed into arching metal huts where people ate
and drank and cheered in the vibe of strumming guitars and
accordions. And he was kissed on the cheek by happy, face painted
young women. Some danced with fire poi and others with luminous Rou
Cyr wheels on which they rolled by. From the beat of drums to the
twang of strings and the electronic pulse of speakers, all was
alive and vibrant in the Minerva Meadows by the time mid-night came
around. Kyo joined a procession of dancers and spoke with others
his age. It was customary for the people of Cerise Timbers to eat
hallucinogenic truffles and Kyo had swallowed two and welcomed the
spectral effects. Often the experience had him brooding about the
ancient times, about spiritual experiences. He knew a little about
history from some of the teachers in his area, they’d told him that
the spiritual awakening of the 1960’s had been a failure, that it
bonded a few but carried a deceptive side to it, that of accepting
servitude as opposed to challenging authority. It reminded him of
what Cerise Timbers were fighting for - their revolution had been
won in the city, but not yet in the world. The Atominii still made
demands of them, and hallucinatory mushrooms held great spiritual
and mental healing, but didn’t hold the answer to freedom. For him,
it was a cultural pleasure here that lay in one of the Three
Circles of their city’s ideology, but they all knew there was still
a great fight to be won. Kyo noticed the dilated glazed expressions
of his peers and they stared back at him. Some were fascinated by
his fangs, his eyes and his tail mutation. He knew they were new
comers from the Atominii. The new comers always made him
uncomfortable, he found it difficult to relax around them the way
they singled him out like a freak. He knew they didn’t always mean
it, seeing a so called Olympian genetic on earth was a big deal
these days. He never liked the Olympian and Titan divisions and
never cared much for it anyway. So he bid farewell, and kept on
moving. There was a whole party out there and not everybody was as
rude. He hoped maybe to bump into Pania and Fenris, if they weren’t
busy either fighting or fooling around.

-13-

H
e’d named her Cedalion. Each time
she took to the sky he saw through her eyes, the colours human eyes
were unable to catch, the magnetic waves, the urinous stains of
animal tracks plotted like radium spills through the dark and
violate woods. This transqualia was for him only, the animal would
never experience what Artex Valdek could see or hear or taste or
touch.

The animal
would never know his thoughts. It would know little beyond the
basic commands, as no human experience would ever upload to her
sensorium. Rather, the eagle’s sensory patterns were downloaded to
his basic neurophase and he would borrow her eyes. Sometimes, he
could feel the air bursting through her feathers and it would
translate as a strange stroking on his shoulder, sometimes more
disturbingly as fingers clawing at his skin depending on the
quality of the neuro-ligature. For long durations of transqualian
flights, Artex would leave the connection, but would dream in
ultraviolet. Byzantium and palatinate washes hung dense below a
rich eminent flash of screens constant and phlox. Beneath it,
mercurial shades, spills of chartreuse glowing like uranium ore in
irregular pools around the blackened expanse, the occasional white
and red throb of body heat pulsing below like a faint star. Oh yes,
he dreamed her sights, he dreamed her daily voyage, her visions
made ever more prescient since he had his own eyes to contrast it
with. The dreams grew ever more intense the longer he flew with
her.

Cedalion had
been tracking movement from the high altitudes, frightening other
birds and predators from the runways and flight paths of V-TOL and
SkyLark.

But it was
not the usual and innocuous bird of prey that concerned Artex
tonight. Cedalion saw blood in the fields, freshly spilled and
hot.

The wounded
victim was veering through the trees and brambles, steered towards
the villages in the late evening where the dusky light still
bloomed. Artex wondered if this hurried individual had seen the
enormous dome despite the optical camouflage, or if it was
something he’d heard instead. Whatever caught his attention, he was
moving fast and jadedly.

‘
Movement,’
Artex Valdek said into the collar of his large trench
coat.

‘
What is it,
number five, sir?’

‘
B.E.V
confirmation,’ the mercenary detailed with a visual lock still on
the maimed individual. ‘Subject is critically wounded and may need
medical assistance. Minimal threat, but stay frosty anyway. He’s
heading from the West, South, West position.’

‘
Copy, Artex.
Moving out now, sir. Over.’

*

By the time
he reached the hospital, they had brought him in on a stretcher,
gasping and clawing at the side restraints. His hair was short and
clotted with blood and his eyes were mink and wild, spinning with
shock. Deliriously he looked around, sucking in deep breaths
through his teeth.

Sonja first
noticed the gaping head wound, and then quickly discovered more.
She worked with two other doctors to cut away his military
clothing. There were devastating lacerations on the young man’s
skin, deep and bleeding and slightly cauterised. He had a compound
fracture in his right arm that looked urgently in need of
attention, and a dislocated shoulder. Infusion guns pumped
sedatives into his bloodstream while they operated. Somebody gave
him an oxygen mask and Sonja worked to keep him
conscious.

‘
Take my
hand,’ she instructed. ‘That’s it, you feel dizzy, right? Are you
dizzy? Just squeeze my hand and stay with me, put strength into it.
That’s good.’

‘
The…they’re
out there!’ He heaved, his dull voice fogged in the face
mask.

‘
What’s your
name?’

‘
Fimble,’ he
managed, blinking as he stared ahead.

‘
What
happened to you Fimble? Who’s out there?’

His eyes
began to drift, moving away into space.

‘
Stay with me
Fimble, wake up! Don’t you sleep now! Not yet. You can’t sleep now,
hear me?’

‘
Keep him
awake!’ Another Doctor instructed. ‘C’mon Fimble, wake up, keep
talking to me…’

‘
Fimble!’
Sonja said again, ‘Fimble, hey!’ And Sonja took his chin and turned
his head and Fimble opened his eyes again.

‘
Stay awake
for me,’ she said, ‘listen. You’ve a deep wound in your abdomen. We
need to sterilise the wound before we treat it and it will hurt a
little. Keep squeezing my hand, alright?’

‘
We’re
putting it on now Fimble, okay?’

‘
Stay with
us.’

‘
We got a
class three haemorrhage,’ one of the other doctors reported as
straps and clot-fabrics layered up on the wound. The medical team
unfastened more of the haemorrhage fabric, padding it down on the
severed flesh. Nanotech designs in the fabric infused osmotic
fibrinogens into the platelets on cellular levels, fusing it with
the skin, but the blood-loss was already great.

‘
I can hear
you,’ he said faintly.

‘
He’s in
hypovolemic shock,’ someone had shouted over him. ‘The patches will
hold him, but we need transfusion, now.’

One of the
Doctors swabbed his wound and smeared his medical Quantic wristband
with the blood and quickly matched the sample. The program ran
through the most immediate potential donors and summoned their
quantics for emergency.

‘
We’ve three
local donors for his blood type,’ he informed Sonja. ‘We’ve two
accepters ready for an emergency infusion.’

‘
Almost
there, you’re doing well.’ Sonja told him. ‘Can you remember what
happened? Where did you come from, Fimble?’

‘
The
Novus…they killed them…’

‘
Who killed
them…?’ she asked, opening his eyelids to check dilation levels.
‘Stay with me Fimble…shit…he’s slipping.’ She informed.

‘
Need those
transfusion groups, now!’ One of the doctors shouted.

‘
They’re on
their way, two minutes…’

‘
We don’t
have it!’

And Fimble
reached out with a sudden yield of strength and a look of terror,
arresting Sonja by the arms and causing her to cry out with
pain.

‘
BUH-BLUE!
’ Fimble screamed.
‘
BLUE-LYCANS!
’

*

For the rest
of the evening Sonja stared into the warmth of a camp fire and
smoked dried tobacco leaves in the quieter regions of the meadow.
Her eyes stared at the hypnotic flailing fingers of lights as they
fanned through the air above, where popping and hissing vermilion
embers bloomed and spiralled. She’d insisted on being alone, but
Dak could only respect that for so long, a fact she noticed when
her Quantic-W pulsed with Dak’s signal.