The Octagonal Raven (27 page)

“We may not understand their Gates,” I said, “but we understand their biology techniques, is that it?”

Nyhal plowed on. “After we stopped the first plague, I began to worry. What about the second…or the third wave? The secretary director at that time wanted me to design something special—so every pre-select would get nanites that recognize the octagonals.” Nyhal lowered the flare weapon, but kept his fingers around it. “That looked like biological warfare on an individual cellular level, and I had doubts about our eventual success. They have been around longer, far longer.”

He smiled. “I came up with something better. Octagonal nanites that coopt the invaders. There is a price. You’ve seen it. The whole world is seeing it now. I’d estimate that the mortality is twenty percent…maybe more. Those who survive and their children, if they’re not pre-selected to avoid regression to the mean, will be immune almost to anything the forerunner can send through their Gates.”

“You just
chose
, on your own, to kill off twenty or thirty percent of the pre-selects? More than twenty percent mortality of the people who run the world…who’ve kept it stable? That’s…it’s insanity.”

“Insane? I saved all the pre-selects the first time, and what happened? A ten percent bonus? I unraveled all the codes and offered a way to ensure we’d be safe forever, and they told me to go back to my laboratory and be a good boy?” His voice dropped down again. “I couldn’t let that happen, not to Mehlysa and her children. So I left Federal Service, and used all the things they didn’t believe. And no one said a thing when I made millions with toys like the variable replicator.” Another laugh followed. “They’ll believe now. And I’m being generous, far more generous than they are to norms—or to me. I’m ensuring that more than half of those now alive survive when none would have survived before. Besides…why not? You pre-selects have chosen genetic traits that allow you to run the world. I’m just trying to reestablish a balance.” His smile spread from ear to ear. “I’ve already taken some steps to ensure it
will
spread.”

“Steps…”

“I had formal announcements delivered all over the world. Of course, the announcements actually were announcements of a different sort.”

“You put your pathogen nanites inside?”

“Nothing simpler. People scan packages. They scan people. But paper? Or expensive parchment? A simple coating to keep them inactive until dissolved by body heat, fingers, you know.”

“Why?” I had almost been afraid to ask, afraid I knew that answer.

“Pre-selects should face some risk for their benefits, shouldn’t they?” His eyes sparkled. “Isn’t that the basis of successful evolution? Now, one could argue logically that we’re unsuccessful products of evolution, since successful evolution results in the diversity of a species, not in its homogenization, but the social evolutionists claim that successful evolution is apparent domination of the planet and its resources. That will do for now. Under either definition, genetic improvements come at a cost.”

“That’s…that’s ancient social Darwinism.” I had trouble coming up with the word.

“No. What you pre-selects have done is
social
Darwinism. Now let me finish before you judge, Daryn. There’s a next set lurking in the background, where no one will ever find it…until it’s too late. The next set is designed to attack on the basis of certain combinations of pre-selected patterns…particularly those patterns designed to thwart genetic regression to the mean…and, also, every so often, certain configurations of genes that only occur in pre-selects will trigger the same reaction that the nanosprays did on you…call it an equalizing factor.” Nyhal looked blandly at me.

“What? Just because their genes fit a pattern…they’ll die?”

“No one should set themselves up as god—or gods. The PST group did. They’ve been trying to remove you and most of your family. They killed Merhga and tried to destroy me, but they can’t stop my science.”

“And you don’t think someone will take apart your little bugs?” I asked.

Nyhal grinned, and the expression reminded me of a skull. “Mine look just like augnites, and they react in exactly the same way, except when they’re in the system of those who are…susceptible. No one is likely to discover…unless you tell them, and even if you do, they won’t find much. They won’t believe you. They don’t believe me. And the effect will die off, because the special nanites, like those I just sprayed you with…well, they’re really organic augnites with octagonal properties, and you and your children will be fine. In time, someone will puzzle it out, but not soon. You see, even if they do, it will take a team, and then the techniques will be out there for everyone…and the biowars will begin. You don’t want those in your lifetime, Daryn.”

“You didn’t have a team.” I was grasping at anything.

“Oh…I did. I just had the resources to take those results and adapt them.”

I could see exactly what he meant. How many men would ever come along with that combination of intelligence, anger, drive, and expertise, and be in the position to use knowledge the way he had?

“You see, don’t you?”

I was afraid I did. “You
are
insane,” I repeated. In a way, it didn’t matter if he happened to be wrong, and if someone else could repeat his work and find a cure to his plague. The damage already was done. The norms could see that pre-selects were vulnerable, and the pre-selects who survived would attempt to retailor the pseudoaugnites…. I winced.

“No, I’m very sane. Too sane. If I were as unbalanced as you think I am, I’d have just tailored a pre-select plague with close to a hundred percent mortality. I’m actually giving you a chance, Daryn…and it’s because of you and your sister. You’re arrogant and self-centered, but you treat people the same. If they’re stupid, whether they’re pre-selects or norms, you’re quietly contemptuous, and if they’re intelligent, whether norms or pre-selects…you listen.

“I’m giving you the tools…or maybe the forerunners did…so many pre-selects are dying that no one will take a pre-select conspiracy that seriously, and you can use UniComm to change things. Of course, you’ll have to survive an immediate frenzied attempt to track you down and kill you, because the PST group will want to destroy your control of UniComm out of revenge. Or in a last effort to restructure the world into a place even more favorable to inherited position.”

That didn’t exactly surprise me.

“There’s one other thing you should recall.”

“What?” I couldn’t help the wariness in my voice.

“Human beings are like horses—we’re ecological failures.”

“If we control the world…”

“We don’t. The bacteria do. They always have. Remember a couple of things. If you reduced the Earth to the size of an orange it would seem as smooth as a spheroid of polished stone. The Earth has existed for five billion years, give or take a few hundred million. Humans in our present form have existed roughly a million, and we require an ecological niche that is very narrow. The problem with pre-selection is that it artificially narrows that niche further, in an effort to allow those who use the techniques to maximize their control of that ever-narrower niche. It also creates huge social resentments, and an ever-greater arrogance and temptation for those who can show their superiority within that narrow niche to exert greater and greater control over social direction and resources.” He laughed. “You don’t believe me—yet—but you will. Indeed you will.” From somewhere came a folder which he extended.

“Those five names are the people who are behind the death of your sister and the last two attempts on your life. There is background information on each.”

“What am I supposed to do? Kill them?” I took the folder, looked at the flat gray cover, then slipped it into the inside pocket of my traveling vest.

Nyhal smiled his dead’s head grin. “You may not have to do anything. Then again…you may. If you choose to do anything at all. That is your decision.”

A dull thud shook the small study. I glanced around.

Nyhal stood. “Go…right through the window there! There’s a wall gate to a tunnel that opens into the maglift train concourse on the next street.”

I moved to the tall window, sliding the casement open, then stopped as I realized Nyhal wasn’t following. “What about you?”

“I’ll be behind you.”

“How about in front of me? No one is ever going to believe me.”

I shouldn’t have been talking because the door splintered open and a giant of a man, even for a pre-select, rammed his way through. A smaller man, almost my size, followed. Both wore commando-style black singlesuits, with the fabric distorted light, making it difficult to focus on them. Focusing on the black slug-thrower the taller man carried wasn’t that hard. It was a model I hadn’t seen since FS training—the kind with osmium tipped uranium slugs—the assault weapons supposed to be restricted to Federal Service troops.

A curtain of electric force enveloped the two intruders, shrouding them in an eerie blue-green glow.

The smaller man just pitched forward. The man with the slug-thrower slowly turned it toward Nyhal, moving so slowly that I had a chance for one move. I pivoted and drove a boot through his knee.

A dull cracking and a grimace on the big man’s face indicated my success. A nanite shield won’t stop that—it’s designed to respond to higher levels of kinetic energy. He staggered sideways, somehow catching himself on the door frame, and started to bring the slug-thrower to bear on me.

He never made it, because Eldyn’s body slammed into his arm, and across the weapon.

The slug-thrower exploded.

Several moments later, I picked myself up from where I found myself thrown across the table. My entire body felt bruised…like ancient armor, the body screen had distributed the impacts, but those had been so great that I was one large contusion.

Both thugs were dead—and so was Nyhal. All three were bloody messes. I had to swallow hard.

I blinked. There wasn’t anything else I could do, and there were probably others coming, although I could hear nothing except a ringing in my ears.

My fingers fumbled with the window casement, and I finally slipped out the long window into the late afternoon. My legs felt like lead, but I had been up for almost two days running.

Hssst!

A laser burned into the tree above my head. I didn’t know where it was coming from, except it wasn’t in front of me. I saw no gate in the stone wall, just what looked to be a tool shed with a rough wooden door, built out of the wall.

Anything was better than standing still and getting fried with an FS-strength laser, the kind that would shred my shield. I sprinted for the shed, reaching for the door lever and yanking the door open.

Inside was a set of steps. I closed the door behind me just quickly enough for it to take another laser bolt. I could smell the wood burning behind me. I bolted down the dozen steps, only to run into another narrow door—this one of smooth steel. I fumbled with the knob, and it turned.

I opened the door to see a passage lit dimly by glow strips—a blue corridor less than a meter wide. Behind me I heard the tool shed door open, and I jumped into the passage and shut the door behind me. I saw the locking lever below the knob and twisted it, glad to hear a dull clunk.

The odor of fresh plastic welled up around me, and I sniffed, but I kept moving. I’d gone about thirty meters along the blue plastic lined way when there was a dull rumble, and the passage shook. Vibrations ran from the plastic underfoot up through my boots.

Although I hesitated for only a moment, there wasn’t any doubt that Nyhal’s refuge or safe house had exploded. The only question was whose doing it had been. The odor of plastic was even stronger at the far end, where a third door blocked the way. I opened it gingerly, peering into a small cubicle with a sink and mops, dimly lit by a minute glowsquare set in the ceiling. After I stepped through and shut it, the door clicked locked, and I could not turn the knob. The side of the door in the closet looked merely like a gray metal institutional door. I had to chuckle. Who would ever follow a door set in the side wall of a janitorial station?

I eased the janitorial door open just a crack, trying to see what lay beyond.

As Eldyn had said, I was in the maglift train station. I waited until there seemed to be a lull in the foot traffic before stepping out. Still, I almost ran into a young woman carrying a child.

“I am sorry.” I bowed deeply.

She smiled, almost as if in mirth.

I flushed, knowing full well what she was thinking—dumb pre-select stranger who can’t even find the men’s facilities. But I bowed again before walking down the next ramp to the platform.