Abiogenesis (4 page)

Somehow, though, she found she simply could not give up or accept that she wasn’t going to be able to find a way out of this. "If you know about me, then you know I’m on the run. I’m no threat to you."

"Not presently. But, then, you’re assuming I believe any propaganda the company chooses to put out. I don’t." He leaned close, placing his mouth near her ear. "They lie," he whispered.

Her body obviously didn’t know or care that he was a cyborg. The heat of his breath on her ear and his scent in her nostrils combined, sending a rush of heat and weakness through her that couldn’t be interpreted as anything but desire.

An unaccustomed spurt of panic followed that confusing reaction. Dalia struggled to free her hands again. She was too much shorter than him, and too close, for a head butt to have any effect on him. More likely, she’d end up knocking herself out. Finding after only a few moments that she was having no appreciable effect, she desisted again, panting with effort. "What are you going to do with me?"

His arms tightened. Slowly, he lowered his head until his mouth was near her ear again. "Don’t allow your prejudice to mislead you, little flower. I am not a machine. This flesh feels. This body desires. This mind wants. So, unless you want to discover what its like to spread your legs for a cyborg, I’d advise you to stop rubbing your very tantalizing little body against mine. I might decide to fuck you until no human man will ever do for you again."

Two completely polar sensations went through Dalia at once; outrage that he would even consider treating her--a trained warrior and rogue hunter--as if she was nothing more than a pleasure slave, and pretty much the same jolt of stunned attraction that had hit her the moment she saw him--except that this time it was accompanied by a rush of heat and a deluge of adrenaline.

She went perfectly still, more from shocked surprise than because he had commanded it, or because she feared he might keep his word, hardly daring even to breathe. As she stared up at him, however, it occurred to her that he had offered her a bargaining chip she hadn’t even realized she possessed. "I would...." She licked her dried lips and tried again. "I will barter the use of my body for transport."

He frowned. "I would sooner leave you here. I’m sure it will surprise you, but I’ve no taste for killing ... and not much for humans, even to slake my needs."

Dalia felt blood flood her cheeks, only to wash away so rapidly she felt slightly dizzy. "But ... you said...."

"I lied."

She blinked at him, stunned once more, not because he admitted it, or even because he had the ability, but because he’d done it so convincingly that she’d believed him. It was no wonder the company had ceased production of this particular cyborg. It was no wonder he had never been caught. He was as human as any human spawned, but capable of far more than any human being, whether enhanced or not, and therefore far more dangerous.

"If you leave me here, you leave me to die," she said finally, trying to keep the desperation from her voice.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Assuming you’re not lying and the company is hunting you, but not because you’ve gone rogue, then why?"

"I don’t know."

He eyed her skeptically.

"I don’t! I went in for my physical examination. When I woke, the tech was stabbing me with a needle."

He studied her for several moments and finally, slowly, released her. "You didn’t question him?"

Dalia shrugged. "I snatched the needle out of my arm and drove it into his throat. It wasn’t pretty, but it was fast. I didn’t manage to get much out of him ... except...."

"Except?"

She shook her head. "Nothing that made any sense." She studied him for several moments and finally tried again. "Look, I know you’ve no reason to trust me, but it’s only a matter of time before they catch up to me. I got rid of the locator--that’s the only thing that’s given me any time, but it won’t last. Take me anywhere. As long as there’s breathable air and half a chance for survival, I don’t care. I’ll give you everything I’ve got," she said, shoving the sleeve of her tunic up and extending her arm to show him her barcode.

He studied it, surprise flickering briefly across his features. He was frowning thoughtfully as he looked at her again. "You’re coded."

"Everybody is coded at birth."

"Except cyborgs."

She studied him. "Cyborgs aren’t born. They’re created ... in a lab."

"Humans are created in labs," he countered, his lips tightening.

She thought about what the tech had told her and what she’d learned from the computer. "But not necessarily, and there’s the difference. They have the ability to create life inside their own bodies. The tech ... before he died, he said that I was gestating. I have ... life, here," she finished, laying a hand over her lower belly.

He stared down at her hand for many moments before he looked up at her again. She had the sense that it was because he was so jolted by the admission that it took him far longer to assimilate the information than one would have expected. Shock was the human inability to accept what they had seen or heard, not something that should ever trouble a cyborg, a creation more machine than biological entity, regardless of their appearance or their artificial intelligence.

And still she had the feeling that he’d been as shocked as she had been at the news. He glanced away from her, turning his head to study something outside her range of vision. "They’re coming."

Catching her arm just above the elbow, he led her up the gangplank and into the ship. They traversed a narrow corridor and finally arrived at the captain’s cabin, which lay at the prow and encompassed the entire width of the ship. Pushing her inside, he studied her for several moments in silence. "You will stay here."

Chapter Four

Dalia counted four of them in all by the tread of their feet, as they came up the gangplank. Reuel met them at the top. No conversation was immediately exchanged, but she knew that Reuel was examining each with care to make certain they were whom they claimed to be.

Or, perhaps he knew them already? He’d said there was a rebel camp. The company had led her to believe that the rogues were, more or less, insane. Something had gone terribly wrong in their design. These cyborgs were a breed that had failed to perform as they had been intended and could not be controlled. They had to be hunted down and destroyed because they had either altered their CPU so that they could not be remotely destroyed, or the central processing unit itself had malfunctioned.

She supposed, willful disregard of their programming by deliberately reprogramming themselves was an act of rebellion, but what if there was more to it than that?

It seemed preposterous. According to what she had been told, the company had made no more than a thousand before they had discovered the defect and ceased production. As superior as these creations were to the race they had been designed to mimic, and even taking into consideration that they might, indeed, be insane, they could not, surely, expect to rebel openly against mankind and succeed?

And to what purpose, for that matter?

In truth, the line between the living human being and the cyborg had blurred as science progressed until the line that divided the two was often razor thin. Genetic manipulation, bioengineering and even mechanical enhancements were in widespread usage. Almost any naturally occurring human organ could be replaced by one that had been bio-engineered if need be. Missing, defective, or damaged body parts were as often as not replaced by cybornetic joints, limbs or digits.

The New Religion claimed cyborgs were an offense to their god, that they were soulless efforts of mortals at playing god. A soul was only created when those gifts of god, the seed of mankind, joined and began the process of growth. Only these were born with souls, and no matter how much of their bodies were replaced or enhanced, they still had souls. Animation was not life. Life created itself, propagated, replicated.

Why then had the tech said the life growing inside of her was not human? How could it be life and not be human? How was it even possible that she could maintain a life not human as she was?

For that matter, why and when and how had it been placed there to grow?

Rogue hunters were not encouraged to engage in sexual activities or to develop any sort of relationship for that matter. They were chosen to begin with because they had no familial attachments to distract them and they were discouraged from considering the possibility of doing so as long as they remained hunters. In point of fact, their training, which began before puberty, made it nearly impossible for them to form either emotional or physical attachments.

If that weren’t enough, the penalty for breaking this ‘law’ was immediate termination, and the company made no bones about the fact that they were always under observation. The locator wasn’t merely a device to keep track of their soldier’s positions, or to find them in the event that they were wounded and unable to communicate. It recorded every move they made and reported everything they did.

Since she’d completed her training, she, herself, had never even felt the temptation to break this unwritten law. She was focused utterly on her missions. She had not engaged in any sexual activities, ever, not even with pleasure devises since she could see no sense in developing a taste for something she was forbidden to have anyway.

Therefore, there was no question in her mind that it had been placed there. What was not immediately apparent was the why and when.

The where was something that was almost as obvious as the how. It could not have occurred, she felt certain, anywhere except at the company’s med lab. But why would the company do something that would jeopardize her usefulness as a hunter?

Assuming the spark of life clung, the organism would grow, according to what she had learned from the med lab computer. She would not be able to fight without risking the life of the organism, and her own life for that matter. As a parasitic type of organism, as it grew and its needs increased, it would integrate its own system so thoroughly with hers that it would, literally, be almost like ripping a part of herself loose to break its hold and could devastate her own system.

Of what use was a hunter who could not hunt?

Despite her value as a hunter, she knew that she was expendable as far as the company was concerned. The task she had been trained for also insured her death, sooner or later. The extensive training and biomechanical enhancements they’d paid for had been to extend her usefulness. Perhaps, though, they had conceived a project they considered even more useful?

But, if that was the case, why then destroy both her and the experiment? Wouldn’t it have been just as effective to destroy the organism? Very likely she would have been no wiser, just as she hadn’t known that they had placed it there to begin with.

That seemed to indicate that the company had not sanctioned the experiment. Someone within the company had decided to experiment without the company’s knowledge or consent, and then they had realized that they must destroy the evidence.

That seemed far-fetched, but it still fit most of the facts she knew. It seemed the most logical answer.

If they had been completely unaware of the experiment, and therefore unaware of the perpetrator’s efforts to conceal his crime by killing her, then they would have seen her act as murder, not self-defense. That was why they’d put out a sanction on her. They thought she’d gone mad, become dangerously unstable.

Unfortunately, there were a number of things that didn’t seem to fit and most of it revolved around the incident in the examination room. The tech, it seemed to her, had found something he had not expected to find. Moreover, he was merely a lowly tech, no more than an assistant, certainly not educated or intelligent enough to have conceived or executed any sort of experiment on his own. He’d not taken it upon himself to destroy her. He’d been ordered by someone to do so.

There was another problem with her theory, as well. Ordinarily, she was only called upon to present herself for a physical examination directly before and directly after an assignment, the first to make certain she was in peek condition before she left, the second to repair any damage accruing from completion of her mission. Over the past four months, she had been called back repeatedly, however, each time for something supposedly minor that had been overlooked before, a test that had been badly performed and needed to be done again.

How could the company, who was rather a lot like the god the New Religion worshipped and knew all, have been unaware that experiments were being performed on her?

Finally, realizing that she didn’t have nearly enough facts to fit all the puzzle pieces together--perhaps never would--she dismissed it and turned to study the captain’s cabin.

It was luxurious enough to tell her several things about Reuel--he enjoyed the better things of life, liked his comfort, and he probably spent the better part of his time in this ship--or he was adept at stealing the better things in life and had an eye for quality.

The bed took up almost half the space and was certainly not typical of the bunks generally found on cruisers much less racers. On course, Reuel was massive--she should have known instantly that such magnificence was not naturally occurring--standing six foot four easily, probably a good three feet across the shoulders, his back, chest, arms, belly and legs taut and at the same time bulging with muscle.

The musculature would need to be massive, of course, and generally was in cyborgs because the alloy skeletal system was notably heavier than the calcium based skeletal structure of a human being, but Reuel was notable even among others of his kind, and the human males, hunters, that had been enhanced to track them.

There were only a handful of females like herself. Despite enhancements, they could not be made to be even nearly as strong as their male counterparts, and certainly not the cyborgs. Their strength was in disarming their quarry, which was also the reason there were only a few of them. If it became widely known that there were female hunters, their effectiveness would be diminished.