Accidental Creatures (23 page)

Hyper looked up at her, his face grimy with oil and fatigue. “Trying to even the odds a bit,” he said. Chango stared at him a moment, realizing what he meant, and then she reached forward and plucked the transceiver from where it rested forgotten on his head. “Then I’m keeping this. Lets not just increase those odds, lets spread ‘em around.”

Hyper started forward, in reflex it seemed, and stopped. “Fine, whatever,” he said. He was sick of her, she could see. Everyone was sick of her, including Chango herself. All she seemed to do these days was argue with people. And she’d always been such a carefree person, or thought she was. “Don’t worry,“ she said, “I’ll leave it here when I’m done.”

She sat and watched holo dramas until they left; Helix empty handed, Hyper accompanied by the rattle and lurch of his robots. When they were gone, she called the police. oOo

Helix’s heart pounded in time with her steps. All was silent under the sun except for the faint cries of a few birds wheeling high in the sky above. On some nearby rooftop, Hyper waited with the radio controls for his robots. He and the birds were her only witnesses as she walked down the middle of the street towards the quiet throng of vatdivers gathered at the gate to the vat yard. The vatdivers, to a one, were suited. Some even wore their harnesses with breathing tanks in them. They were massed in front of the main gate, five rows thick. As she drew near their collective stare bored into her, pushing back against the hand that pushed her forward.

She came to a stop roughly ten feet in front of them, and directly across from Vonda, who stood in the middle of the throng.

Helix stared at her because it was easier than staring at all of them. Vonda stared back. Presumably they all did, though she was beginning to wonder how the ones in the back row were getting their view. Probably risers. Finally she got tired of waiting for somebody to blink. “Last one in’s a rotten egg,” she said, and dodged forward, aiming her shoulder between Vonda’s and the diver next to her. Vonda caught her neatly, and shoved her back into the street. Behind her and to the side stood April, her arms folded across her broad chest. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get the hell out of town, and stay there,” she said, almost gently.

Helix shook her head. “Nope,” she nodded at the vat houses beyond the gate, “this is what I call home.”

The crowd was grumbling now. “Why don’t you go jerk off? You got plenty of hands for it!” somebody shouted to general laughter.

“What are you so afraid of?” she cried out, “I’m not going to hurt anybody.”

“No shit you’re not. You’re not getting in there, that’s why,” said Val, “We can’t let GeneSys make all our decisions for us. We’ve made our own decision about you.”

“Yeah, you’re fired, freak, so fuck off!” screamed someone in the back.

“You just don’t want me here because you’re afraid of me. You don’t know what I am!” Helix shouted.

“What are you?” answered several people at once, and then the words were taken up by the rest of the crowd. “What are you? What are you? What are you?” they chanted as they advanced on her, circling around until she was surrounded by them; their faces, their taunting voices.

“I don’t know!” she screamed back at them, raising her arms around her to ward them off, “I don’t know!” Her mouth open wide, she flashed her teeth, and her fingers stiffened to claws. “You want a freak? You’ve got a freak!”

Someone darted in to make a grab at one of her arms and she leapt on him, wrapping her arms around him and biting him on the shoulder. Her teeth slid against the rubber of his vat suit and he shoved her into the arms of three vatdivers. They grabbed her arms and she kicked wildly, twisting around until she could reach somebody’s hand, and she sank her teeth into it, feeling the flesh break. She tasted blood and heard a scream above the general clamoring. There were still five hands on her. “Fucking bitch,”

someone said, and slugged her in the side of the head. Her head snapped to the side and the scene swam before her eyes. People were advancing, closing the very small gap that had existed in the center of the crowd. Someone kicked her in the stomach and she would have fallen forward except for the hands, eight of them now, holding her by her arms. She got her feet under her again and kicked backwards indiscriminately. Her captors retaliated by pulling her arms back farther against the joints and kicking the backs of her knees until she sank to the ground. She looked up, blinking. In the distance she could hear the clank and roar of Hyper’s machines moving down the street. The cavalry was coming, but not soon enough. Someone loomed in front of her, a tall, heavyset man with a round face and hard eyes. She didn’t know him; she’d never even met him. He held an air tank cradled in his arms, “You’re going to wish you’d left while you still could,” he said, and he lifted the air tank up above his head. She saw it silhouetted against the sun, and then there was a sudden blur of motion from her right, and Vonda was there, somehow, with the tank in her hands. “That’s enough!” she screamed,

“This is a strike, not a lynching!”

“Says who?” The man advanced on her. Vonda twisted the nozzle on the tank and released a blast of frozen air in his face. He backed up, his hands over his eyes, and she turned around and threw the heavy tank directly over Helix’s head. The people holding her had to make a decision, let go or get hit with it. They let go. Helix dove forward and Vonda grabbed her hand, using the momentary confusion to plunge through the crowd.

By now Hyper’s machines had made it to the gate. The Augmented Hoomdorm jumped spasmodically on its pneumatic legs, scattering vatdivers in its path. As Vonda dragged her through the confused mob, Helix caught a glimpse of Robo-Mime, tenaciously circling a vatdiver wielding an air tank, confronting him with his own angry image. He swung the tank, and the video tube exploded, showering glass on himself and surrounding vatdivers.

Helix and Vonda dodged around a group of divers busy battling with Close Enough for Jazz. One of them had wrested the saxophone from its grip and was jamming it in the tractor treads. “Hey, there they are!” someone shouted, and the group abandoned the robot to head off Helix and Vonda just as they were about to break free from the rioting mob. “Traitor!” screamed a woman, rushing towards them with a decanting pole in her hands. But before she could reach them she was intercepted by Attack of the Sneetches. She tripped on the round little automatons, her pole clattering to the ground as she fell.

“This way,” hissed Vonda, veering around the stumbling divers and away from the thick of the mob. They ran full tilt down the street as police sirens wailed and three squad cars swerved around the corner ahead of them. Vonda ducked down an alley between a row of storage tanks and a warehouse, and Helix followed her. Behind her she heard the popping of gas grenade launchers, and up ahead there was a car horn honking. It was Chango in her beat-up Chevy. They put on an extra burst of speed and leapt into the car, Helix in front, Vonda in the back seat.

Vonda slapped the front seat with her hand. “Let’s get the hell out of Vattown for now, okay?”

Chango looked at Helix, “What’s she doing here? Why isn’t she back with her mob?”

Helix shook her head. “She saved my life for some reason, and she’s right, we have to get out of here.”

Chango frowned and pulled away down the street. As they drove, the sounds of the rioting died down behind them.

“Where will we go?” asked Helix.

“To Orielle’s,” said Vonda.

“What? Are you crazy?” said Chango.

“No. She likes Helix, she’ll protect her, and she’s got the firepower to do it should that mob back there reassemble itself and come looking for her.”

Chango swallowed and nodded her head, turning the car towards the Eastern Market. oOo

Benny was in the middle of a crushing mob of vatdivers, surging towards the line of police up the street.

“Fan out!” he screamed, “Fan out onto the side streets! We can still catch her!” He spotted Val only three feet away, “Val!” he shouted, trying in vain to press through the mob towards him. “Val! Go down Denton!” But he didn’t hear him, and then the crowd surged again, and Benny lost sight of him. He worked his way out of the riot and down an alley behind Compau Street. Vonda and Helix could have gone down any of the side streets around the vat yard. He really needed a team of ten or twenty to follow all their possible escape routes, but this was strictly a solo gig, now. He ran down Faber to Lumpkin and past a row of warehouses. At the far corner he saw a red and yellow chevy crossing Lumpkin, going down Holbrook. Chango’s car. He was too far away to see who was in it, but it was the only lead he had. He raced down Evaline now, heading for Conant. Hopefully she’d turn down Conant. As he passed a crumbling and vacant parking lot he bent down to scoop a rock up off the ground. Still running, he scraped it hard across his forehead over his right eye, and clenching it in his fist, struck himself on the cheek, hard enough, he hoped, to raise a bruise. But his cosmetic alterations were in vain. By the time he got to Conant he could just see the Chevy in the distance, heading south and east, towards the Market and Orielle’s.

He sat on the curb and leaned back on his hands, staring up at the sun blazing away in a cloudless sky. In the distance he could still hear the police sirens and angry screaming. This was the riot he’d tried to prevent back when Ada was organizing the vatdivers. Now it had happened. She was long dead, and it happened anyway.

If he had known, way back when Graham first contacted him, that it would all end up the same, no matter what, would he have turned him down? Probably not, and for the same reason that he was still here, all these years later. He should have left Vattown long ago, but the thought of leaving all his friends behind stopped him. Hugo, Val, Coral... it was because of them that he’d done what he did. And because of them he’d stayed here, huddling around the memories of what he now realized was the best time of his life; that summer before they started diving, when they had all seemed immortal and infallible, touched by the sun like gods.

But now Hugo was dead too, and Benny wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. When this was over he’d shake the dust of Vattown from his shoes, and take himself someplace that was not ripe with memories of corpses.

He sat up, took a long look up and down the empty street, and fished his holotransceiver from his pocket.

oOo

Hector clenched and unclenched his fists as he entered Graham’s office and took a seat before the vast grey cellite desk. Graham kept his desk empty of clutter, and the translucent smokey grey surface reflected the downtown skyline from the windows behind it. Outside the sun was shining, but in Graham’s desk, it was always a cloudy day. Hector’s eyes wandered to the multi-processor perched on one corner of the desk, a bobbing brain encased in clear cellite. He jumped as a side door opened and Graham entered the room.

He didn’t waste any time on niceties this time around. No offers of drinks or inquiries into his health. He just glared at Hector, and then stood looking out the window with his back to him. “They’re striking down there,” he pointed in the general direction of Vattown and turned to face Hector again, “and do you have any idea why?”

Hector shook his head, “Not really, no. Better wages?”

Graham bared his teeth and laughed savagely, “You really are a piece of work, Martin. How could I let myself be so thoroughly bamboozled by you? I bought your whole mild-mannered absent-minded genius shtick, retail. I was so busy feeling contempt for you that I never began to imagine how subversive you really are.”

Hector felt unexpected pride at being described as subversive. He’d never thought of himself that way, but considering the tetras and how far he’d gone to protect them, he supposed it was true. This knowledge gave him courage. “What’s this about, Graham?” he said.

“You know goddamn well what this is about! That little creature of yours has stirred up a hornet’s nest in production! Seems she went vatdiving without a suit, and somebody used my clearance code to make sure she didn’t get fired for it. But of course, you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Fear gripped Hector’s intestines and squeezed. Graham could only be referring to Helix. When she left, Hector had hoped she’d get as far away from GeneSys as possible, but apparently that wasn’t the case. She’d gone only as far as Vattown and then taken the first opportunity available to gain access to the vats

— as a diver. “Actually no, I don’t know anything about it,” he said.

“Oh come on, she’s going by the name Helix Martin, and you’re telling me you don’t know anything?

Lilith kicked you out of the vat room because of her, didn’t she?”

Hector sighed. “Yes, she did.”

“Why? And don’t tell me you don’t know.”

“I - I found Helix outside the vat room. As near as I can tell the other tetras ganged up on her and drove her out. It has to do with their social structure. There can only be one queen to a hive.”

“So you helped her. Helped her get that job down in Vattown, but I have it on good authority that she’s only been working there for a few weeks. You had to do something with her in the meantime. Slatermeyer insists that he doesn’t know what happened to the egg. Yes, I know about the egg. You couldn’t have taken her to the lab. You had her living with you didn’t you? In your apartment. That’s sick Martin, really sick.”

Hector glared at him. “We weren’t lovers, Mr. Graham, if that’s what you’re implying. I couldn’t send her back to the vat room, they would have killed her.”

“But you could have housed her in the lab, only you didn’t because you knew it would attract attention and you couldn’t afford that.” Graham stepped around his desk and leaned towards Hector. “You see, Martin, I’ve been to see the queen.”

“What? You went there?”

“Yes. Your assistant Colin Slatermeyer took me. Pity about him.”

“What did you do to him?”

Graham shook his head. “Nothing. They took him away and I didn’t see him again after that.”

“Shit, Colin. Why did you make him take you there?”