Seed (4 page)

The Liaison stared at Pihadassa. Muscles worked in his jaw. Pheromones rolled off him in waves. Without a word he turned and strode towards the pilot. Pihadassa reached out a hand to stay him, but the Liaison shrugged it off.

The pilot watched impassively as the Satori landraces strained past her and up the steel ramp into the zep’s hold. The Liaison moved up beside her, close enough to brush his chest against her shoulder. The pilot did not look at him, but Pihadassa smelled the abrupt flow of pheromones. A sexual response to most kinds of stress—anger, fear, excitement—it had always struck Pihadassa as an elegant primate survival trait. She smiled, watching. She would have to describe this to Sumedha—

Sumedha…Something cratered in Pihadassa’s chest as she remembered she would not see him again.

“The mountains have nice weather this time of year.” The Liaison stated this flatly, challenging. The pilot jerked her chin west, where beyond the tarmac, beyond the high skin fence separating the airfield from the ruins of west Denver, the Rockies rose, icy and dark in the February dusk.

“A good year for skiing,” she said. It seemed a strange thing to say. Nobody had skied since before the first Hot Summer, since long before Pihadassa had come awake in Satori’s warm embrace. The Liaison stepped back, nodded, satisfied that the tenants of some ritual had been met.

“So you’re Rippert’s girl then,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“I know you. We met when you were a little girl. Back in Dubai.”

“I remember.” The pilot looked directly at the Liaison for the first time. “You and your troops had just come in from the desert. Dad was pissed that you got sand all over his Turkish rug.”

“Sounds about right,” the Liaison smiled. “How is he?”

“He’s okay. Bored. Doesn’t know what to do with himself without a war on.”

“We might be about to solve that little problem for him.” The Liaison glanced up meaningfully at the massive dome’s animal expanse. Shoved hands deep into pockets, pulled his coat tight around himself, as though chilled by his thoughts. “He tell you anything?” The pilot shook her head.

“Just that I’d have extra cargo. And don’t fuck up.”

“Seconded.” The Liaison briefly withdrew a hand from a pocket and jabbed a thick finger at Pihadassa. “That’s your cargo.” Pihadassa moved forward, the tarmac hard and cold against her bare feet.

“Hello,” she told the pilot.

“She looks cold,” the pilot observed.

“I do not normally get cold,” Pihadassa said. The quick freeze that came with the fading light felt crisp against her skin.

“How’s that?”

“My vascular system is efficient.”

The pilot’s eyes narrowed with understanding. “You’re a clone.”

“A composite,” Pihadassa corrected. She took a breath, coming fully to the moment. The girl’s helix unfolded. Pihadassa reached out, brushed the tip of the girl’s tight pony tail. The girl swallowed involuntarily, caught somewhere between attraction and disgust. Pihadassa smiled at her.

The pilot slapped Pihadassa’s hand away. Backed up a pace, screwed her shoulders back, military, defensive.

“Touch me again, you bleed.”

Pihadassa smiled pleasantly. “I understand.”

“We can leave as soon as these monkeys finish loading.” The pilot gestured at the ramp. “Hop in.”

“These landraces will be joining us. As will some others. I wait for them.”

“We’ve waited long enough,” the Liaison said. “Get in.” Pihadassa said nothing, simply remained still. The Liaison’s nostrils flared as he seemed to calculate exactly how much of his natural aggression to unleash on the situation. “You can get into the zep yourself, or I can assist you.” He took a step forward, presented big hands, ready to execute his will. “Your choice.”

“If you touch her, I will kill you.”

Warmth spread through Pihadassa’s body at the sound of the advocate’s voice. The Liaison turned.

The woman had arrived silently. She stood a few meters away. Like Pihadassa, she wore a simple shift, but there was something different about her stance. Something loose, predatory. She watched the Liaison with pale eyes.

“I will.” Her tone matter-of-fact, the flash of a sharp smile, eager.

“Mercy,” Pihadassa said. At the sound of her name, the advocate’s eyes flicked to the Designer.

“Mother.”

“Be still.”

Mercy sank slowly to her haunches, and balanced there, balletic on the balls of her feet. She looked again at the Liaison, who took a step back now, lowering hands. The pilot settled her palm on the butt of a ceramic pistol at her hip. Pale eyes following the movement—the advocate smiled.

“Mercy!” Pihadassa spoke sharply. “You will do only as I command.” The advocate glanced at Pihadassa, then back at the pilot. Smiled again, the baring of sharp teeth, defiant, an expression of beautiful malice that struck Pihadassa as reptilian, rooted in some primordial stretch of the creature’s helix. “Kassapa gave you to me,” Pihadassa said. “You are mine. Obey.” The smile faded. The advocate gave a barely perceptible nod, the slightest acquiescence. Pihadassa turned to the Liaison.

“This is my advocate, Mercy. She will accompany us.”

The pilot kept her hand on the pistol. Pihadassa watched the pulse in the girl’s neck, felt the sudden heat rolling off both her and the Liaison: their bodies sensed death. The Liaison shoved hands once more into coat pockets. Pihadassa wondered if he knew of the advocates. His tone grew conversational.

“How many of your friends will be joining you?”

Pihadassa smiled.

The Satori landraces rolled the last cart up the ramp. Abandoned, the crane fell limp, a macabre doll against the heap of corn seed. Landraces gathered around Pihadassa, some taller and graceful, others short and dense. They genuflected to her.

“Mother,” each murmured in turn, and in turn Pihadassa affectionately touched the tops of their bald pates. She let the helix of each fill her mind, noting minute variations from one to the next. She knew each intimately. She’d made them.

“The females,” she inquired.

“They are right behind me, Mother,” the advocate said.

“Females?” the Liaison asked. Pihadassa gestured with a languid hand at the landraces.

“They are primates. Like you.” Like Sumedha—her twin, her mirror, her Other…His face filled her mind and something inside Pihadassa tore. Her throat clenched with the need to sob. She breathed, putting her attention on the sensation until it passed. “Like me. They couple.”

The females arrived then, a score of them jogging across the tarmac in the dusk, skittish as herd animals, their shifts wet with sweat. They pressed in close to their mates, touching fingers, foreheads, lips. Pihadassa noted the barest extra curve to three of the females’ bellies. Their skin glowed in the fading light.

“Up the ramp,” she ordered them. “Get aboard. We are leaving.” She looked at the Liaison, then the pilot. “Now.” The Satori children filed aboard and nestled into the seed filling the storage bays. The Liaison placed a hand on the pilot’s shoulder.

“Tell your father he owes me a scotch.” He nodded once to Pihadassa, then turned and stalked back towards the dome, shoulders bent against a sudden icy gust rolling down off the frozen Rockies.

“Mother.” Mercy motioned Pihadassa up the ramp.

The pilot followed. The hatch squeezed slowly shut behind her.

Pihadassa nestled into a bed of corn seed with two Satori children, tall ones, and began stroking their shoulders, backs, necks. The female shuddered with pleasure as Pihadassa touched her ear—an ear that was a mere G and A switch from the gills through which the fetus in the girl’s belly breathed.

“You are beautiful, child,” Pihadassa whispered. She watched the pilot’s hands rove the zep’s control panel, hitting switches with deft jabs of her fingers as she went through her preflight. The quiet hum of electric props soon vibrated through the steel cabin. The landraces gave one another startled looks as the floor shifted beneath them.

“We are flying?” the girl asked, and her face filled with wonder. Pihadassa kissed her forehead. The girl smiled and gripped her mate’s hand.

Pihadassa closed her eyes and began to meditate. She tried to open her mind to the helix, but it would not come. Instead her awareness fell into orbit around a void, an empty place deep in her chest that throbbed like the socket of a lost appendage.

Sumedha.

He would be thinking of her now, wondering where she had gone. Soon he would learn of her defection, and he would cast his mind puzzling down the chain of her choices. Perhaps he would understand, would reach her same conclusions. If not, he would be left alone. She felt cold absence.

“Are you alright, Mother?” the girl asked.

Pihadassa opened her eyes. The cabin was dark except for the soft glow of the cockpit’s instruments. Sleeping children breathed softly. The girl watched Pihadassa with wide eyes. She reached out, touching slender fingers to Pihadassa’s cheek. They came away wet.

“I am fine.” Pihadassa nodded at the girl’s partner. “I miss my mate.” The girl glanced down at the male sleeping with his head against her hip. Her face went soft with immediate empathy.

Pihadassa touched the girl’s cheek and stood. Nearby the advocate sat on her haunches, balanced on the rim of a storage bin. Pihadassa reached her mind out, touched the creature’s helix. Kassapa had done beautiful work, had ripped code from everywhere—deep marine sources, insects, raptors, even creatures long extinct—and hammered it into human form. Vertical slits of irises watched Pihadassa. Pihadassa gave the advocate a tiny nod and moved up to where the pilot sat fiddling at a partially disassembled sat phone with a pair of needle nose pliers. The advocate lowered herself silently to the floor and followed.

“Where are we?” Pihadassa asked, sliding into the empty copilot’s chair. The pilot set the sat phone on the metal floor beside her seat and leaned forward, squinting at the instrument panel. She tapped at a glowing readout, then peered into the darkness beyond the windscreen.

“Don’t know exactly. Once in a blue moon you can pick up GPS out here, but not usually.” She shrugged. “Western Kansas, on a heading for Fort Riley.” She yawned, stretched, propped her boots up on the instrument panel and leaned back in her chair, lacing fingers behind her head. “Hope you’re not in a hurry. These fatties don’t exactly push Mach. Wind’s with us though. We should hit Riley before sunrise.” Pihadassa closed her eyes, breathed; the pilot’s helix settled in her mind and began to slowly turn.

“You could come with us,” she told the pilot.

“Come with you?”

“You have strong genes. Endurance, and resistance to disease. You would make a strong contribution. You would be welcome.”

“No offense, but I don’t speak Chinese.”

Pihadassa opened her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”

“You are beautiful. And the Mother created you without any help at all.” Pihadassa breathed, matched her heart rate to the girl’s, which had begun to quicken. “We are starting a new life. You could join us, if you wanted.”

The pilot took her feet from the dash and leaned forward. Her pupils dilated. Her nostrils flared. A wave a pheromones washed over Pihadassa. Anxiety, but…curiosity as well.

“What life?”

“A life where we are free. Where the Mother shapes the helix, as she has always done. With only a little help from me.”

“I don’t know what Mitchell told you back there, but I don’t expect your pups are going to taste much freedom at Riley. More like the south end of a scalpel.”

“We are not going to Fort Riley,” Pihadassa said. She spread her hands, inviting.

A vein throbbed three times in the pilot’s neck. Her hand dropped towards the pistol on her hip.

Movement flickered in Pihadassa’s peripheral vision. The pilot’s body jerked upwards. Something snapped. Blood sprayed the windscreen. The pilot rose slowly, then seemed to hover over her seat. Surprise shown for a moment in her eyes, then she went limp.

The advocate stared down the length of her arm at where her fingers—bones spliced with coral and dense as granite—disappeared into the pilot’s throat.

“Are you injured, Mother?” she asked. Her pale gaze stayed on her kill. A slow smile crossed her face. Pihadassa watched the wolves, the snakes, the eels, the raptors—all the various killers swirling up out of the advocate’s helix, reveling.

“I did not order this. You do only as I command. Next time you wait.”

“If I had waited, Mother, she would have killed you. How, then, would you command anything of me?”

“You will wait!”

The advocate let her arm drop. The pilot slid off her fingers and collapsed into a heap on steel floor plates.

“Yes, Mother.”

“Such a beautiful creature, and you ruined her.” Blood pooled as the last vestige of life ebbed from the body. “Get rid of it.”

“Yes, Mother.” The advocate defiantly licked one bloodied finger with a dexterous tongue before she spun the wheel on the pilot’s emergency hatch. The hatch hissed open. Frigid air flooded the dirigible. The advocate gripped the pilot’s neck and, with a motion smooth as a breath, hurled the limp form out into the darkness. Then pulled the hatch closed, spun the lock. Pihadassa pointed at the yoke protruding from the cockpit’s control bank.

“Fly. East-southeast. Land before sunrise.”

“Yes, Mother.” The advocate took the seat and Pihadassa returned aft.

“What happened, Mother?” The pregnant child and her mate lay nestled in corn seed, faces creased with worry. Pihadassa settled in with them.

“Do not worry. What is your name, child?”

“Name, Mother?” The girl looked confused. Pihadassa stroked her ear.

“We start our lives together now. Your life is yours to name.” The girl thought about this, then glanced skeptically at the Designer, hesitant to reveal a desire, lest it be taken away. “Truly,” Pihadassa assured her.

“What do you call the ring around the sun? That you can see just before it rises and after it sets?”

Pihadassa smiled. Love filled her.

“Corona.”

CHAPTER 3

he Lobo sat like a matte black spider on eight burly run flats. It growled a mean, atavistic nuke growl.