Seed (23 page)

Sumedha ignored him, ignored the dozen helmeted men and women pressing close—his new security detail, expanded since the bombing. Kassapa’s orders. He inhaled deeply, taking in the stench rising from Snake’s new Tet pens. Turned a long stretch of Satori’s helix in his mind, searching for possible tweaks in the timing of the dome’s seasonal shedding.

The storm had come like a white wall down out of the mountains and socked the city in for a week—then, in a moment, had evaporated. The sun now shone yellow and dense in a sky gauzy with tundra methane. Cold rivulets trickled down Satori’s skin, wending through goose bumps the size of anthills. Runoff from a rapidly melting cap of snow at the dome’s peak.

The storm was nothing she could not handle. She had been designed to thrive in aberrant weather. She was mammalian, kept warm by her own metabolism. Yet Sumedha shivered with empathy at the—

She
.

This proclivity to anthropomorphize was new to him. He sensed its roots in his isolation, his need to connect. Knew it hampered his acuity. He knew, too, the only way to cease compulsive thoughts was, simply, to cease them. He went still, brought his mind to a state of disciplined rigidity, felt nothing but heat spreading his pores.

Snake cleared his throat politely. His two helper boys shuffled impatiently, one tall and broad, hollow-chested, the other small and gaunt beneath his FEMAs. Another body thundered to the ground.

“Alright,” Sumedha said. “Show me.”

They stood on the twelfth floor inside the steel-and-concrete skeleton of a high-rise just outside Satori’s perimeter wall. Pairs of thick landraces ranged through the pens, checking pulses. They stacked pale bodies onto wagons and hauled them to the building’s crumbling edge, where they pitched them over the side. Far below, landrace teams gathered around the spot where the bodies cracked the earth. They gathered them onto more wagons and shuttled them inside the dome.

Snake cocked back his shoulders and rubbed his bare belly—an unconscious display of primate musculature his undernourished frame entirely lacked. Lifted his chin, peered over the press of bodies cramming one chain-link pen. He pointed.

“That one.”

An adolescent boy hunkered in a corner, so thin he seemed about to disappear. A chaos of tatted hieroglyphs covered his naked torso. He stared emptily at a spot of chipped concrete.

Sumedha motioned to the four landraces he had tasked for help. They nodded heavy brows, and muscled into the pen, hauling bodies aside until they could reach the tattooed boy. As their hands gripped him, the boy moaned, a long empty sound punctuated by the smack of another body hitting the ground.

“Take him to my work chamber,” Sumedha ordered. The landraces chuffed obediently. They marched their way past the security detail with the tattooed boy, still moaning, held between them. Sumedha turned to Snake. “Are there any others?”

Snake gave an apologetic shrug and shook his head. “That’s it.” And now Sumedha noticed dark circles shadowing Snake’s eyes. Snake’s face looked pinched. As Sumedha stared, the young jailor grew visibly uncomfortable. He looked away, and back at Sumedha, and rubbed a hand against the back of his neck. “What’s up?” he asked after a moment. Sumedha said nothing. He breathed, ran his mind down Snake’s helix. Found a combination of switches there as familiar as his own name. It felt like music ticking through his mind. Crop Graft 3. The Tet. Sumedha turned to the head of his security detail, a big woman with a heavy jaw.

“Take him. Put him in the pen.”

The woman hesitated. Sumedha sensed her pulse quicken behind the soy epoxy riot mask. Another body hit the earth, the sound reverberating like a gunshot. Sumedha pointed at Snake, who glanced from the Designer to the security guard to his two helpers. He ran an absent finger over his cobra tattoo and smiled, puzzled.

“Snake’s cool,” he said. “It’s all good.”

“Take him,” Sumedha repeated. “Put him in the pen.” The security head nodded once. Took a stun stick from her belt and leveled it at Snake. It sizzled. A blue bolt shot forth. Snake dropped, convulsing. His two friends backed away, open-mouthed.

“Lucky. Bruce,” the security head ordered two of her troops. “Put him in the pen.”

The armored security guards moved forward. Gripped Snake by wrists and ankles, swung him—counting one, two, three—and on three flung him into the pen. He hit concrete with a thud. Four sick men, to whom Snake had been jailor, eyed him narrowly as he continued to twitch with volts.

“You have the Tet, boy,” Sumedha explained, and then turned to regard Snake’s two helpers, both of whom now looked on the verge of bolting. Sumedha breathed. DNA unfolded. He parsed through it until the better strand revealed itself. He opened his eyes and addressed the taller of Snake’s helpers, who stood shirtless in torn denim pants.

“Your name?”

“Uh…” The tall boy looked to his FEMA’d companion, who offered no help. “Juice,” he said, staring at the concrete at Sumedha’s feet.

“Do you understand the operation?” Sumedha asked him. Juice hesitated, then nodded. “Tell me,” Sumedha commanded.

“He…uh, we collect folks sick with the Tet. We pay the
Chupes
to bring ’em to us. We pack the sick ones into the pens and shoot ’em up with antibiotics and antivirals. We feed ’em, and watch for anybody who recovers.” Again, he shrugged.

Sumedha nodded. “Juice.” Committing the name to memory. “You are now in charge of this operation. It is very important we spot anyone who recovers from the Tet. Do you understand?” The tall boy nodded. “Good. I will check in periodically. If you need anything, send one of my landraces.”

Sumedha turned and strode away without waiting for a reply. Bodies thundered to the ground outside, in rhythm with his footsteps.

….

There was something strange about the boy, something crucially absent. He pressed his cheek against the wall’s smooth skin. The swirl of his tattoos drew Sumedha close, his nose nearly touching the line of tiny animal figures up the boy’s shoulder. The boy caressed the wall with his fingers. He smiled with his eyes closed and made contended noises.

“You feel pleasure,” Sumedha observed. The boy kept his eyes closed, but nodded.

“
Hermosa
.”

“What is?”

“She floats above the world.” The boy kept his cheek once more to the wall, nuzzling. The mammalian echo of both nursing and mating.
She
, the boy had said. Sumedha placed his hand on the wall, closed his eyes, felt the city’s warm pulse.

“Satori,” Sumedha said.

“Yes, Sumedha,” spoke Pihadassa’s voice. Sumedha breathed it in.

“Nothing.”

“Very well, Sumedha.”

“Satori,” the boy echoed. His voice turned singsong. “Satori keeps us afloat.”

“You feel an affinity for Satori,” Sumedha observed.

“Satori,” the boy echoed again. Empathy stirred Sumedha. It struck him that the boy felt no pain. He considered bringing a table up from the floor and having Satori restrain the boy, but the boy sank to his knees, his face still pressed to Satori’s skin. Sumedha stilled his mind, let the boy’s helix come into focus.

The Tet configuration revealed itself immediately. Yet…it lay dormant.

Sumedha opened his eyes. He paced the ovular room. He stood over the boy.

“Do you have a name?”

The boy turned until his back rested against the wall. His face rose towards Sumedha. His eyes failed to engage.

“Do you have a name?” Sumedha calmly repeated.

“Bacilio,” the boy said to the space beside Sumedha’s head. “My brother calls me Pollo.” He assumed a doll-like posture, palms flat on the floor, legs stuck straight out before him.

“Do you feel any pain, Bacilio?”

“Not in Satori.” Bacilio spoke the last word carefully, as though not to offend it. “She’s complete.” For an instant his eyes met Sumedha’s, then looked away. “Not you, though, homes.
Usted no es completo
.” Sumedha breathed, puzzling.

“Satori. Restraints, please.” Digits articulated forth from the wall and floor, wrapping the boy. He looked surprised for a moment, but seemed not to mind. Seemed in fact to settle himself into the restraints, an infant being cuddled by its mother.

Sumedha pressed his index finger against Bacilio’s shoulder joint. The boy exhibited no pain. Sumedha moved his hand down to the boy’s elbow, then his wrist and fingers.

“Any pain in your joints?” Sumedha inquired. Bacilio shook his head slightly. Sumedha furrowed his brow. “You have the Tet. But it does not present.”

He lowered himself lotus position on the floor, facing the boy. He recalled the boy’s helix, turned it with his breath. The Tet was there, precise and elegant. Pihadassa had designed it, and it bore her grace. Key switches designed to turn, to destabilize the entire helix. Love flooded Sumedha whenever he looked upon it. He let himself slip into deep meditation, going over Bacilio’s helix switch by switch. As he worked, Bacilio’s breath gradually synced with his. He felt invited, welcomed.

He saw something. A configuration he had seen only rarely before, and in his own failed designs, never in a wild-born human. Such a configuration did not survive long in this world. He opened his eyes, took in Bacilio’s placid face. Bacilio’s eyes stared into nothing. A puzzle opened up before Sumedha, and with it, wonder.

“You are autistic.”

….

The door to Kassapa’s work chamber flexed open and Sumedha found himself staring into the vertical irises of an advocate. The soiled cotton and burlap she wore stank of dust, sun, blood. For an instant her helix spun, beautiful and vicious, in Sumedha’s mind.

“Sumedha,” Kassapa called from within. “Enter.”

Inside, Kassapa sat naked, lotus position on a furred cushion protruding from the floor. Brown skin briefly gleamed as he bowed in his seat, leaning forward into an amber pool of dome-filtered light falling through the open window. To one side, leaning against the skin wall, stood a wild-born man. He wore military fatigue pants tucked into combat boots crossed at the ankles, an old-world flak jacket over his bare chest. He and the advocate eyed one another, the man exuding pheromones, the stench of fear and contempt, the advocate smiling, salacious and predatory. Sumedha faced Kassapa and bowed.

“Brother.”

“Satori,” Kassapa commanded. “Cushion.” A fur mound rose from the floor and Sumedha settled into it. The two of them meditated for a moment. Love filled Sumedha as his mind briefly touched Kassapa’s, a hand touching a mirror. His brother. His enemy. Then Kassapa opened his eyes and motioned to the tall wild-born.

“One of my security liaisons to the outside.” Sumedha greeted the man with a nod. The man regarded him with flat eyes. Licked something out of the space behind his bottom teeth, said nothing. He crossed his feet and leaned with a hand against the wall near a rendition of Pihadassa’s face, which Kassapa had lazed from memory into the flesh.

“I am glad you are here, brother,” Kassapa told Sumedha. “You will want to hear this. Pihadassa has been establishing colonies. My advocates found one.” He smiled. Biolumes gurgled as the chamber’s walls turned abruptly violet, then green with excitement.

Blood filled Sumedha’s ears in a hot rush. His throat tightened.

“She is dead?”

“She was not there,” the advocate said, her voice a malevolent singsong. She skirted the room’s edge, her movements preternaturally smooth. The security man eyed her. His palm settled on the butt of a ceramic pistol holstered at his hip. The advocate glanced at him, smiled and quietly hissed.

“Pihadassa lives?” Sumedha asked her. The advocate’s eyes flashed to him.

“I do not know.”

Tension flowed from Sumedha’s muscles. Something akin to a sob tried to escape his chest. He let it out as a long, slow breath. He met Kassapa’s eyes.

“That is disappointing,” he said. The lie hung in the air between them until a thin smile tightened Kassapa’s mouth. He turned to the wild-born man.

“You say you know the government agent who searches for Pihadassa?”

“Doss?” The man showed humorless teeth. “I worked with her in Siberia.”

“She is persistent?”

“Oh yeah. She’s a dog with a fucking bone. She’ll find your girl.”

“You trust your man at Riley?” Kassapa asked. The man’s eyes narrowed as he considered the question, then he nodded.

“I think we’ve pushed the right buttons. He’ll be reliable. He’s blocking their coms as we speak.”

“Very well.” Kassapa’s gaze shifted to the advocate, who had sunk to her haunches and stared, seemingly entranced, at the raptor claw fingers of one of her own hands. She flexed the fingers slowly, one at a time, as though marveling at each one’s precise strength. “When can you and the other advocates be in place?” Kassapa asked.

The advocate’s hand went still. “They are already in place, Father.”

“Good.” Kassapa addressed the liaison. “Coordinate your man at Riley with the advocates.”

“Will do.” The man did not wait to be dismissed. He strode quickly from the room, the advocate’s eyes tracking him the whole way. Kassapa spoke the advocate’s name.

“Grace.” Her eyes snapped to him. “Make sure your advocates are ready.”

“We are always ready, Father,” she told him, and her lips peeled back, unsheathing teeth refined from a thousand predators.

“Go.”

The advocate stood, moved to the door with the fluid strength of a tidal surge, disappeared. Kassapa watched her go, and smiled. The walls turned red with pride, lust. He reached out, touched Sumedha lightly on the shoulder.

“We will let the government woman bring Pihadassa home.”

Sumedha breathed. His mind emptied. He cast his eyes to the likeness of Pihadassa lazed onto Kassapa’s wall.

“You obsess, brother,” he said. Three deep breaths swelled Kassapa’s chest before he answered.

“I wish to know her.”

“You do know her. She is like us.”

“She betrayed us!” The words flashed from Kassapa’s mouth. His hand moved between himself and Sumedha, tracing an imaginary cord connected to both their hearts. “She betrayed our bond. No, brother, I do not know her. I have yet to understand.” His face contorted with pain, then smoothed. He stared intently at Sumedha. “Do I know you, Sumedha?” Their eyes locked. In unison, they breathed. Their minds briefly touched, electric and fierce.