Through the Grey, page 6
Akima narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. Then he shook himself and turned away. “I'll see you tomorrow. Try to sleep sometime, OK?” Akima plodded out of the room, heavy with some unseen burden.
Greg looked at the floor and nodded, shivering with a hundred sudden finger-touches of the dead on his back. “Leave me alone,” he growled at the memory of them.
He tried to shrug them off his shoulders as he turned to dress, but the torn feeling of them stayed on his skin, even through his clothes. He wore the visitation of their fears, bleeding into his own. They'd never touched him in the tank before. And he couldn't remember if Akima had ever sworn at him, before, but he thought not—nobody swore here but himself. The senior engineer was one of the few who tolerated his moods and fits with equanimity. Greg trembled and tried to walk out from under the weight of these thoughts.
He felt himself crumbling and had to stop and be sick. He vomited up pink bile and the last of the fluorocarbon. He stayed a while, leaning against the nearest wall.
As he stood still, panting, an alien memory trickled into his head. It itched over the base of his skull and wormed into his forebrain, illuminating his mental notes on the nanite. For a hot-white instant, the nanite schematic burst into shining detail, exploding outward in an expanding and brilliant sketch of forms and functions, rotating, spinning like the design suite gone mad, clear and solid and complete.
He reached for it and it sparkled a moment on the tip on his finger, a mote of fairy dust. Then it collapsed into darkness with a clang that rang his skull like a bell. He gasped and stumbled back a step, shaking his head to cast out the ache.
He'd had it. For an instant, he had touched it. It existed, if only in a memory somewhere. He could find it again. If he just had enough time… Very distantly, a thousand names began to recite in the back of his mind, a dim chattering he pushed aside.
The dining area vibrated with angry sound and harsh light. Liss glanced around, discomfited and wary. She didn't like the feeling. It was foreign to her, who had never felt any cause to fear her close-packed neighbors. Until now. Now she wondered who was spying on her, from what unsuspected place electronic eyes and ears kept track. The volume and freneticism of the diners sent a frisson up her back. They seemed contentious, loud, frightening and alien. She chided herself for imagination gone to paranoia. Laker's ultimatum, the loss of Sigma, her own imposed pressure to help Greg were working against her normal calm, leaving her feeling hunted.
“Is today some kind of holiday I've forgotten about?” the doctor asked, sitting beside her.
“I don't think so.”
“Must be spring fever or something,” he commented, shrugging it off. “I almost couldn't get out of Medical for all the sudden drop-ins. I'll have to get back quickly. Here,” he added, shoving a data chip at her. “This is what I was able to get. There is a higher-echelon reference number, but the report connected to it is sealed. I didn't even try to get into it. If Laker is monitoring you, he may be keeping an eye on my terminal calls too.”
Liss leaned toward him. “Are we being ridiculous?” she whispered. “I can't help myself, but I know I'm acting paranoid. Everything and everyone seems suspicious to me, like there's something dire going on that I can't put a finger on and can't stop.”
“Aside from what's happening to Greg?”
“Yes. Or maybe it's just that I'm frightened for him and all the rest of this is making me see monsters in shadows.”
“Paranoia seems like a safe mode of operation at the moment. Better too vigilant than not vigilant enough. But, yeah, things seem kind of crazy to me, too. Laker is acting very strange, if you ask me. It could just be that Sigma's blow-up is effecting him badly, though, and the rest of the station is reacting to his upset.”
Liss frowned. “I don't know…”
“Can't worry about it, now. If you're still interested in finding that nanite information, you'll have to focus on that. If I'm right, Greg could be approaching a breakover point where the nanites are limited only by the availability of whatever resources they need to do whatever it is they do. Numbers may soon become academic.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I hope you're wrong.”
“Me, too. But it will be irrelevant if you can't get to the information. However, we might have had a stroke of luck. There's a terminal from the old diagnostic system which was installed when the station first came online. If you can jumper it into the main trunk, somehow, you should be able to get into the data system without a location ID. Sounds kind of nutty, but it might work.” He shrugged. “Best I could do.”
Liss smiled. “Well, it's kind of a crazy problem, so I guess a crazy solution is apropos.”
“I wish…” He shook his head. “I… wish you luck, Liss. I suppose you don't want me to come along?”
“No. If anything happens, I'll be the only one in trouble. If I can't manage it, you'll still be around to do whatever can be done. You could always say you didn't know, but if you came along, you'd be just as bad off as me, if something goes wrong.”
“Yeah… Be careful. Please.” He reached out as if he would take her hand, then pulled back and rose to his feet. “I'd better go. Good luck.”
She smiled again. “Thank you.” She watched him walk away.
Sweat tickled at her temples and down her neck. She could smell the wire insulation in the manual jumpers overheating. The ancient screen flickered as the file download counted down.
She skimmed over the information in the file as it copied to the data chip. Download nearly complete…
Psychological impact of mimicry/replication is expected to range from disruptive to debilitating. Factoring in additional conversion effects, as well, it is anticipated that average subjects will be psychologically broken by the psycho-emotional complications, which—
Liss shuddered and jumped ahead in the text, noting in a corner of her mind that the schematic was fully downloaded and the file nearly so.
Lists of names, factors, dates, storage cells scrolled past. She stared at them in horror. “Bastards,” she muttered.
The download rate flashed: complete.
She began to pull out.
“Identify user.”
“Oh… no.” She yanked the data chip from the writer and typed furious keystrokes.
Epsilon's security attempted to lock onto the terminal location. Failing, it grabbed at the user information. Liss jumped up, slipping the data chip into her pocket, and yanked out the jumper wires in the power board.
The wires smoked and burned black strips of char into the palms of her hand. Electricity crackled and popped with the smell of roasting meat and insulation. She whimpered and jerked her hands back filled with smoking jumpers. She stuffed them into her pockets too, and darted out of the room. In the corridor, she slowed to a stroll, squeezing back tears as the hot loops burned against her hands. At the first recycler, she shoved the wires into the slot and hurried on, her mind chewing into the information she had seen.
Greg coughed and retched heavy pink fluid onto the floor between his knees. Expelling the fluorocarbon was getting harder. He wondered if it lingered in his lungs, now, eating quietly away at his ability to breathe air. He'd long ago gotten used to the idea of “breathing” the liquid, but his body was beginning to fight the process his brain accepted. He shook his head and puked bright-pink goo. His arms shook with the effort of holding him up after exerting themselves against the pressure of the tank. His elbows gave.
Liss caught him, flinching at the slice of pain through her palms. He gasped for air, hanging in her arms a moment, spitting out the residue of the breathing mixture. Then he shook his head back and rested on his heels, breathing deeply, purging the last of the gel with sudden, choking hacks.
He pushed her aside and climbed to his feet, sharp cracklings of pain ripping along his flesh beneath the suit's skin.
She had come into the tank observation room and demanded that he emerge immediately. His annoyance at the loss of time was wiped out by perverse relief.
“What in hell were you doing in there?” she demanded, backing off only a step, tucking her injured hands out of sight. “The pressure in the tank is killing you.”
He glowered as best he could while covered in pink slime. The contact lenses that let him see through the super-dense medium made her an indistinct, dark blur out here.
“It's just the fluoro.”
“Oxygenated fluorocarbon is light pink,” she said, pointing, “not bright pink and red like blood.”
He hung his head back and pawed at the suit seals. His fingers fumbled as his head seemed to spin. He dropped onto a bench.
“Help me out of the suit. Please.”
Short though she was, hands stiff from the burns, she was able to wrench the heavy, slime-soaked suit off his shoulders and shove it down to his waist. Air flooded into his lungs, pushing them to full expansion for the first time in hours as the restriction of the suit was removed. He felt faint and the chanting in his ears swarmed up in volume, then dropped slowly back to a dull buzzing.
The air felt cool and tasted like plastic. He became momentarily drunk on it and slumped against the wall.
“What did you want, Liss?” His tongue stumbled over the words.
“I have the build details and schematics for the nanite.”
He turned his head to stare at her. Frustrated, he poked the lenses from his eyes, growling. He blinked and looked at her.
“How— Where did you find them? I looked for them myself. I couldn't—”
“Sealed military databases,” she cut in. “This was a terrible thing. It was a last-ditch, a sort of 'joke’s on you,' just in case. I haven't had a chance to look it all over, but there are things… some of it is really nasty.”
He leaned his head against the wall, again. “I thought I had it. I did have it. For just a moment. I thought I could recreate it in the tank, but it wouldn't come back.”
“You won't have to do that, again. I hope.”
“I can't do it again.” He shoved the suit completely off, kicking it away. Tendrils of bright, purple-red blood traced down his arm and side, clung to the shape of his nearly-transparent hand. “I'm falling apart.”
She stared. The once-supple body had become tight, fat stripped away until muscle and bone stood out in brittle relief. Patches of cloud seemed to cling to his skin around the shoulder and chest, reaching narrow fingers up toward his neck and down into the curve of pectoral muscle over his heart.
“There may not be enough time,” he murmured. He was tired and wound-up simultaneously. His blood seemed to be singing and muttering secrets into his ears which he couldn't quite catch. The recitation of names continued, looping on, endlessly, a constant low tone in his inner ear.
She swallowed. “I will get you some help.”
“Without the nanite, there's nothing…”
“I know of someone who can help with the nanite.”
“Who would want to help me? I'm despised. Even Akima can't stand me anymore.”
“This man won't have a choice. He owes you. I'll see to it.”
She put a small packet on the bench. “This is the data chip. Don't lose it. It can't be replaced, yet.” Her expression softened and she looked only at his face. “Can you— Will you manage?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I'm not dead, yet.” He attempted a smile that broke and died. “I'll come around, when I'm… decent. I won't be able to carry you off for dinner, though. Something might shatter.”
“I'll look out for you.”
She shoved her hands into her pockets and left him as he pushed himself to his feet and shuffled into the shower.
“I found your name on a report.”
“Which you got from the military database. There was an unknown user report. I should have guessed it was you.”
She felt cold in her fury. “It's academic how I got the information. I have it. What I simply cannot understand is how you managed to switch sides and go undetected for so long.”
He lowered his eyes and glanced at the viewscreen on his desk. “It's really quite easy when one has money and secrets.”
“You bribed someone?”
“I bought my safety. As anyone would have done. I was an intern on the project. I was not a big fish, but I knew a lot. I leveraged that.”
Liss looked disgusted. “And we have all believed in you for so long. Well, now I have the secrets to barter with and you will do what is necessary.”
“Or you will destroy me with this information?”
“I will let everyone in Epsilon and every station I can reach know what you really did during the war. You are an old man, but they have never ceased to hate what you stand for.”
“You are threatening me, Liss?”
“Motivating. I want to help Greg. He needs your knowledge and assistance and you don't want to be exposed for what you are.”
“I have only ever tried to do my best, to help—”
“Your help hasn't always been such a raging success, in spite of appearances. You tried to 'help' your side by deploying this wretched nanite and it somehow got to Greg fifty years later. It was the Crossfield deployment, wasn't it?”
“It would have to be, yes.”
Liss's gaze turned inward. She murmured to herself. “He cut his hand on a wire…” She felt sudden despair; she had taken him there. She glared at the man before her.
“I—”
An urgent beeping from the message console interrupted them. Dr. Laker looked down and pressed a button. His eyes scanned the message and grew wide. Liss read over his shoulder and swallowed down an urge to retch.
Liss sat in front of her terminal, her fingers manic on the keyboard, scrabbling to recreate a link. Her hair swept forward, touching her cheek and jaw with stripes of dark and light.
Greg raised the corner of a smile at the sight of her. The doorway chimed as he stepped across the threshold.
“Hey,” he started. Then he stopped and twitched one shoulder as if bitten by some transient insect. His eyes narrowed as he turned.
The old man on the bed looked back at him with an intense eye, a corner of Liss's quilt clenched in front of his face.
A low growl started in Greg's throat.
“Don't get angry, yet, Greg,” Liss requested, turning in her seat. “Laker is going to help you with the nanite. He helped design it.”
Greg seemed to vibrate. He stared at Laker, his mouth drawn tight.
“You. At the bottom of anything, there's always you.” He stepped across the small space and reached for the old man. His hand touched the quilt first, a shield raised between them, and stopped. One fingertip brushed along a scrap of soft buttercup and wrung a ghost of scent into the air between them. Greg quieted, settled, let his shoulders down, though he kept his fingertip against the worn fabric for a moment longer.
“I remember that smell,” Laker whispered, looking steadily at Greg. “That's silk. Yellow silk. There is no more. We destroyed the caterpillars that made it and the moths that laid the eggs. I knew a woman who used to wear silk and she smelled like that, of earth and sun. But no one smells like that anymore.”
“Liss does.”
“Does she? Then, you and I have even more reason to work together.”
“You sound like you're asking me,” Greg scoffed.
“I am offering and, in my way, I am begging.”
Greg cracked open a bitter laugh. “You. The king of Epsilon, the great savior of civilization, want to help me, the head-case. Why?”
Laker dropped his gaze and watched his hands place the quilt on the bed, smooth it, smoothing, smoothing…
“I owe it to you. I owe it to Epsilon. This nanite… I can help you with it. And we have little time.”
“No. I have little time. You have all the time in the world. Why the hell should you care what becomes of me? If this toy of yours kills me, what does it matter to you? I'm the freak of the station, I hear voices, I know the dead. Maybe I don't want to keep on living like that.”
Laker stopped his hands. “It is not just you, anymore. Akima has found three of the nanites in the hypo tank. They were crushed by the pressure, but he identified them. They are beginning to migrate out of your body.”
“Oh, I see. The gray goo isn’t just a myth. And here is your side's revenge coming back to haunt you. What was it supposed to do, eh? I haven't had time to read your report.”
“It was—” Liss started to answer for him, but Laker waved her down and took a deep breath before speaking.
“It was a mimicry nanite, meant to propagate horror and disease through the remaining population. The program waited for a non-standard sample, then replicated that in its host. If the host—”
“The victim, you mean.”
“Please… this is very difficult, Greg.”
“I'm not going to make it any easier for you to excuse yourself, Laker. You deployed a terror weapon into a population of innocents. Didn't you? You seeded Crossfield with it, then waited for the survivors to come back to bury the dead. But they skunked you. They set off Starfall and that shut your nanite down.”
“No. It is much worse than that. Guidon was deployed after Starfall. The nanites had been prepared and stored. Many were destroyed by the Starfall bursts even through their bunkers, but we had enough to seed Crossfield.”
“So, your side deliberately deployed this horror that you had engineered. Because you couldn't stand to lose. You wanted to wreak a little vengeance because the other side had the gall to rip victory from your bloody fists, even though it literally cost us all the Earth. What went wrong?” he mocked. “What spoiled your plan?”
“Conscience. We… just wanted to be able to negotiate. We had nothing left but this. It was illegal. It was horrible, but it was a war and we, like the rest, were desperate and afraid. But, in the end, we simply couldn't do it. We realized what it could do to any chance the human race still had and we threw the switch, turned them off and let the residual radiation do the rest. And said nothing.”
