Toxic (66 page)

She strolled around the dining hall. The men avoided her. Even when she approached a group, they would disperse and reform further away. Her demands were answered with polite refusals whenever they were something other than how to find the bathroom or the laundry room.

Shortly after noon, she sat on one of the ageless cafeteria benches and observed the neighboring metal islands. Maybe one of them held prisoners, or maybe they were doing experiments.

Jon came and sat down in front of her, his face impenetrable, interrupting her moment of speculation. He put his hands flat down on the table’s faded Formica.

“You can’t question the men like that,” he warned. “And for your information, those two platforms are closed.”

She politely listened to her new friend’s advice. Could she call him that, knowing that his sister had betrayed her?

“I’m sorry for giving you problems. I’m aware that being only woman among people who have been stuck here for so long can cause a certain tension.”

He raised an eyebrow in surprise.

The outward – and controlled – attitude of the people was definitely hiding an important secret, the type which would put his life in danger. The possibility of ending up locked up and then abandoned had been haunting her since her arrival. They could also throw her overboard. She wouldn’t survive the fall.

“Did one of our men bug you?”

“No, not at all. That’s what surprises me. My dad was in the navy. He commanded a destroyer. Do you know what he called off-duty time in ports abroad? Fuck stops.”

His embarrassed smile came with an implied explanation. She had imagined everything except that. Jon leaned in towards her and put down a pill, which rolled on the table.

“A libido inhibitor?”

He confirmed it with a nod of his head before specifying that all of the men on the platform took this medication, without exception. According to him, the lack of female company was a tolerable annoyance thanks to this product. She didn’t know how to interpret this revelation in the end. As a nurse, she knew the effects of these types of drugs, used to calm the desires of “hypersexual” people. Jon excused himself, leaving her with her questions.

“Determine the exact location of the transmitter,” she remembered, carefully observing B and C. Elaine did a mental coin toss before leaving the dining hall.

Her recent captivity had taught her one thing: it was better to be informed and act in full knowledge than to choose to be ignorant under the influence of fear or threats. Whatever was going on here, she wasn’t planning to stay out of it.

The nurse went back to her room, followed by her chaperon, who was always close to her. An oil rig was a concentration of a maelstrom of pipes and tunnels, with ventilation shafts running for hundreds of meters on each level. Taking off the shower grating revealed to be quite easy. She gave herself a few minutes before crawling in the darkness in a narrow space. Once again.

“It won’t be long,” she reassured herself. “Just long enough to slip away from them.”

She fought against herself and against the heat for a good half an hour before once again enjoying her freedom of movement and a space big enough to breathe without suffocating. The deserted hallway was home to distant mechanical noises. Without a plan at hand, finding her way was going to be complicated, but as a required safety rule, there were signs almost every ten meters with a green dot that indicated her position inside the structure. Access to the bridge leading to B appeared just past a tunnel filled with drilling material.

Hiding behind a pile of boxes, she spent several minutes observing the premises without making out any activity or people crossing. Her wet t-shirt benefited from the sea breeze. In the end, there might not be anything on the other platforms and Jon was right. It was better to make sure, she decided, leaving her hiding place. The crossing lasted less than a minute.

B had a similar layout to that of A: pathways, hallways, storage areas and never-ending tanks on several levels, without taking into account the jungle of tubes which were sometimes as large as storm water drains. Elaine started down a hall big enough to move around in a car. The facilities spanned a space that would be impossible to cover in an hour or two. Each level contained hundreds of meters of hallways. She explored some of them before coming to a logical choice: simply sweeping the exterior perimeter. As a result, she followed the railing for a good ten minutes at a strained pace.

At the bottom of a staircase, she noticed a sign suspended by a chain which denied entrance.
Authorized personnel only
.

On the ground, the crushed cigarette butts seemed recent. She climbed over the barrier and then dashed up to the next floor, which was a semi-covered passageway. The wide-open window caught her attention. On her tippy toes, she went up to the cabin, listening for the slightest sound. She slid her head through the door frame.

“A radio and a computer. Bingo.”

She knew that she had left her room a while ago and that she needed to think about getting back. Communicating the information and getting out of there wouldn’t take long, she decided before going in. She might not get a better chance.

K
jet had chosen a destination with multiple advantages. The island, once a city-state, constituted a sort of sample of human civilization, a fragment gathered on a small surface which was quite easy to control and monitor. There were few infected wandering around there, favoring the survival of healthy products, which the mercenaries had been counting on clearing out before Africa took up their attention and their means. This was exactly the type of expedition that the GenoSarans would enjoy, he had assured him. Jave took his advice.

He had done well.

When they took off from Singapore at the end of the trip, which had gone by without difficulties, Delko had incessant praise for a culture which was so original and stunning and was already making plans to make a replica of the city on his planet with its towers, shopping malls, streets and avenues. Of course, he would need living specimens to add the special touch to his epic zoo project. The GenoSarans considered retro-engineering an art, as it required much more than simply taking something apart and putting it back together after the analysis of all sorts of parts. It was about keeping alive – and under control – a portion of the intelligence which designed it.

“Humans leave their touch on the things they make,” Delko started.

Jave politely moved his head in agreement.

“Rather, it seems to be the result of their anatomical configuration,” he continued, moving his long gray fingers with their blue tips, “and not their mental structure. What do you think?”

“Each of their manufactured objects contains a sort of signature,” the Lynian shared.

“Five fingers of uneven lengths, opposable thumbs allowing for a specific type of gripping ability and therefore adapted tools.”

“I think that what the Collective is interested in is to cut them up to sell them to rich consumers.”

Delko leaned his neck in towards him.

“Ah yes... Finger bones have become very a distinguished dish; it’s true. Fortunes are being made in this business.”

“And of course, you want your part. That’s why you’re on Earth.”

“The GenoSaran Consortium thinks that they constitute a potential opportunity whose prospects are worth studying.”

And they weren’t alone in that, Jave almost added. More and more combinates and diverse and varied commercial and institutional groups were trying to grab at parts of the market, to invite themselves to the party through their commissions systems.

The pressure on Naakrit would be growing so long as his discovery aroused appetites. He wondered if the moment hadn’t come to take it up a notch. Kjet was in the cockpit and the two reptilian soldiers in charge of their protection weren’t close by, on the far side of the cargo hold.

The emissary leaned towards them in turn.

“How many products can one of your giant transporters hold?”

“Their capacity is around five million cryo-coffins and...”

Jave interrupted him right away. “Healthy, living, awake humans. How many?”

Delko’s bulbous eyes changed color to blue with a metallic gray background.

“The Primark certainly didn’t authorize you to discuss this, am I right?”

“I represent the interests of a consortium which pursues its own goals.”

“We are aware. Are you proposing a sort of alliance?”

“You didn’t respond to my question, engineer Delko,” Jave put him back on track, not without pleasure.

“Earth is located very far away, away from trade routes, thousands of light-octans from the Collective. You need to think about food, waste disposal and very complex sanitary and social problems... Believe me, there is no better and more practical solution than cryo-transport for such a volume of merchandise.

Jave’s nasal vents dilated. The GenoSaran got to the point.

“Barely more than a thousand,” he said.

“That’s all?”

“To start, this type of ship has a crew of ten units and can hold a little more than a hundred passengers. The quarters are designed for that. Given that humans are smaller, they could squeeze in... One thousand, no more.”

Too few, Jave thought.

You couldn’t rebuild a civilization with one thousands representatives of a species which was going extinct.

“What about five million?”

“If you freeze them all, yes. But there’s another problem, a more political one, if you want to do things that way. The mercenaries also have well-equipped combat vessels, according to our own information. Such a large ship won’t get through a battle. We can’t risk our precious transporters. You would have to arrange for them to leave the area.”

In other words, an impossible task.

Kjet interrupted the discussion with an announcement. “We’re arriving in Woomera.”

Officer Kuhn welcomed them as they got out of the Tracker-Jumper on a former tarmac crushed by the sun and invaded by burnt vegetation. Jave disembarked alongside the reptilian and his troopers. He adjusted his suit’s ventilation and was copied by the GenoSarans, who followed him. Kjet, very comfortable under the oppressive heat, didn’t respond to his rival’s greetings. Instead, he demanded a summary of the situation.

The Kathari spoke with his guttural tone. “The Primark ordered that the discovery not be shared with our partners, whether they are commercial clients or otherwise.”

The second officer whistled a counter-order. Jave, satisfied, thought his scales were going to raise up in anger.

“The orders have changed. The emissary can access the site.”

Still lacking assurance as well as confidence, Kuhn bowed down instead of verifying the reptilian’s claims, which Jave would have done to keep in control.

“Humans used this place for the testing of piloted or automated aerial combat vehicles. The facilities belong to a Royal Australian Air Force. We found numerous machines in the hangars, of primitive technology, which might be of interest to our pre-tech expert.”

The GenoSarans kept their distance in what appeared to be an internal affair to them, of no interest to their plans. The response to Singapore would occupy them for a moment.

“I bet he’d like to get one of these things to fly. It’s too bad that their cockpits are so small.”

Jave got the Kathari back on track. “What did you find in these buildings?”

“Some spoiled products and a bizarre apparatus.”

Clearly, he couldn’t reveal any more. Kjet asked the Consortium envoys to wait on the ramp, out of the heat. He gave instructions to the two soldiers, who took positions between the T-J and the hangar. Then, they moved away in the direction of the massive doors.

Kuhn started his speech once again once they were inside. He pointed to the vessel lit up by the projectors. Jave almost lost control of his talent.

“This is a vehicle manufactured within the Collective. There is no possibility that the local civilization could have designed it; it’s beyond the scope of their knowledge. Humans probably studied it, but they didn’t manage to open it, let alone get it back working.”

So, that was what Naakrit was hiding, the Lynian thought, easily recognizing the type and its origin. His rootlets, delighted by the flow of refrigerated carbon, shook with excitement. The device, which had an angled shape and a size more or less the same as a Tracker-Jumper, was resting on top of hydraulic jacks. The front shield had a black surface, vitrified by intense heat and the outer fuselage showed a smooth coating, in some parts covered by streaks and mechanical scraping marks. He made out the reddish shell of an Arthrosian who was speaking to a reptilian technician under the engine bay.

“We think that this spaceship, the Exythene, was shot down by a human army.”

Kjet rejected that possibility right away.

“Their technology is incapable of such a feat.”

“I know. But we found traces of an indigenous projectile in the external hull.”

“It didn’t crash land on solid ground,” Jave intervened.

“It probably struck an aqueous surface,” the Kathari confirmed. “The colored areas that you see are caused by algae.”