Everything but the Squeal

by John Scalzi

  The two of them looked at each other.

  “Come on, guys,” I said. “I just want to get my friend back.”

  “Fine,” one of them said, and walked with me into the room.

  “What are these things?” one of them asked, pointing at the pig-shaped forms.

  “And where are the pigs?” the other asked.

  “Those are the examination tables,” I said, moving into the control room. “Pigs hate to get picked up, so we just have them lean up against these instead. And they’re behind that door there because before they come in, I want to spray some disinfectant in the room. Helps keep infection down. No, you two stay in there. You need to be disinfected, too.”

  “We just need skin samples,” one of them said.

  “I understand,” I said. “But you break the skin while getting the samples, these pigs are highly susceptible to infection, and then that will catch to the other pigs. I’m already in enough trouble. This will only take a couple of seconds.” I pressed a button, and liquid spritzed out of a sprinkler-like attachment in the ceiling.

  “Okay,” I said. “Here come the pigs.” The two started unzipping their bags to take samples as I slid open the door to let the pigs in.

  Two minutes (or so) later, I called Marcus. “We have a problem,” I said.

  “What is it?” Marcus said.

  “I don’t know how you told these guys to take samples, but however you told them, the pigs didn’t like it,” I said, and then held up the phone so Marcus could hear the screams and squeals. After a minute of that I got back on the phone. “I could open up the video feed,” I said. “But I don’t think you’d like that.”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone. Then, “I don’t think you appreciate the seriousness of the situation,” Marcus said.

  “It’s not my fault,” I said. “You asked me to help them get genetic samples. I did exactly what you asked. It’s your guys who are fucking around here.”

  “Get them out of there,” Marcus said to me.

  “It’s not safe,” I said, truthfully. “I think the pigs will eventually wear themselves out, but I’m not going anywhere near them until then.”

  “I still need a sample,” Marcus said, after a minute. His ability to write off his two assistants was almost admirable, in its way.

  “I can get you a sample,” I said.

  “I need it from more than one pig,” Marcus said.

  “I can give you samples from as many pigs as you need,” I said.

  “You need to come to me,” Marcus said.

  “I can’t do that,” I said. “The pigs won’t exactly follow me.”

  “Considering what just happened, I’m not going to come up to you,” Marcus said. “And let me remind you your friend Leah is still with me. And I still have a gun on her.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I will come to you, but then you’ll need to come with me. Give me a minute. I know where we can go to get your samples.”

  “Here,” I said, handing them both gas masks and taking one for myself. “It’s like the sign says. You’re going to need this.” I fit mine on myself and waited for the other two to fit theirs on. “Come on.” I started walking toward conduit 2.

  “Where are we?” Marcus said, through his mask.

  “Why are you doing this, Marcus?” I asked him, as we walked out over conduit 2. “Last week you talked to me about the problems of a zero-footprint paradise and how we’re cutting ourselves off from the rest of the world, but I get the feeling you’re not doing this for the good of humanity.”

  “No,” Marcus said.

  “Then why all the talk?” I asked.

  “I needed to see what was going to work on you,” Marcus said. “Will told me in email that you got a job here in the Arnold Tower. I had a client who has been very interested in getting the genetics of these pigs for a while now. I saw an opportunity. I knew your mother was pushing for technology outreach, so if you were of the same mind as her, I might have been able to get you to play along. But it doesn’t seem like your thing, so I went with your friend here.”

  “I’ll have to thank Will for that,” I said.

  “He doesn’t know,” Marcus said. “You can’t blame him.”

  “Nice of you to treat your brother that way,” I said.

  I could see Marcus shrug, briefly. “It’s the real world out there, Benjamin. Some places still use money, not energy budgets. I have a living to make.”

  “So all of this—attacking New St. Louis—is just another day on the job,” I said. We’d reached the access port. I bent down to open it up.

  “That was going to happen anyway,” Marcus said. “New St. Louis and the other cities are too closed off from everything around them. The people in The Wilds were already planning something. I don’t care about it one way or the other, really, but it was useful cover for what I needed to do. So I provided the logistics. I borrowed the basic battle plan from a similar action in Detroit a couple years back. They used a fake riot to build an agricultural tower. We’re using a real riot to steal from one.”

  “And they signed off on this, too, I suppose,” I said.

  “They don’t know anything about this,” Marcus said. “As far as they’re concerned, the big event is gathering seeds from the agricultural towers. They’re going to sequence those genomes and put them out for everyone to use. That’s admirable, in its way, but my client has other plans for the pig genes.”

  The access port was fully opened. “After you,” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” Marcus said. “After you.” I shrugged and went into the conduit. Marcus kept a bead on Leah as they she stepped down the ladder. Finally he stepped down.

  “Where the hell are we?” Marcus said again.

  “What does your client want with the pig genes?” I asked.

  “I’m paid not to ask,” Marcus said. “But I think he wants what the people in The Wilds want: the benefit of someone else’s work. Having this genome means he has to do lot less work to make the next set of improvements.”

  “My mom was planning to make this part of the Technology Outreach,” I said. “He could have just waited. He didn’t have to start all this. You didn’t have to start all this.”

  “I don’t think my client believes having this genome be open source technology is in anyone’s best interest,” Marcus said. “And personally, I just want to get paid. Now. Enough. Give me the samples.”

  I looked over at Leah. “You remember when we were on the roof, and I talked about being here,” I said.

  “I do,” she said.

  “I’m sorry you’re getting the embargo treatment,” I said.

  “It’s all right,” Leah said.

  “Benjamin,” Marcus said.

  I reached down and flipped open my phone.

  “My samples, please,” Marcus said.

  “‘Embargo lifted,’” I said into the phone. I looked at Marcus as the rumbling started. “Here they come now,” I said.

  Leah reached up and pulled the gas mask off Marcus’ face just as the first of the samples blew out of the pipes. He caught a load in the face and went down sputtering. Leah and I bolted for the ladder, her first, me following. As I cycled the access port shut, I could see Marcus trying to get a grip on the ladder. I think he might have gotten up the first step before the port sealed shut.

  “The human body is simply not designed to swallow that much pig shit,” is what Lou Barnes told me the next day. Nevertheless Marcus Rosen survived, although not well, and faced with the prospect of a life watching the world go by in a cell, lawyered up, cut a deal and brought down some industrialist from the Portland Ecologies—or, well, would have, if the fellow hadn’t permanently relocated to Turkey. It’s my understanding that he’s not going to be very happy if he ever steps onto North America again.

  Will took the fall of his brother badly, and the fact that his brother had betrayed his emails and idol worship even worse. Leah never blamed Will for any of
it, but Will blamed himself and eventually that was the excuse he needed to break up with Leah and leave New St. Louis entirely. He settled in Vancouver eventually and is doing quite well. He and his wife send holiday cards.

  The Technology Outreach program took a hell of a hit in the aftermath of the Battle of New St. Louis, not in the least because so much of the biotechnology that mom would have used for outreach flew over the wall in tiny planes. But mom, who won her election, rolled with the changes, and rather than trying to prosecute those who stole from the agricultural towers, the executive council gave them amnesty and open sourced the genome maps of the plants that were taken, making everyone’s lives easier. And after a few decades of sitting behind its wall, New St. Louis is beginning to open up to The Wilds and the people there. They’re nowhere close to being zero-footprint beyond the border, but they’re starting, and that’s something.

  After the Battle of New St. Louis, my mother offered to find me a new job if I wanted it; her thinking was the man who caught the mastermind behind the attack should be able to get any damn job he wanted, even if he was her son.

  I thanked her but I told her no. I still work at Arnold Tower. And more than that: Leah and I were married there, up on the experimental rooftop garden, with Barnes, Jeffers and Pinter as my groomsmen, Syndee as my “Best Sis,” and Lunch as ring bearer. He seemed quite pleased with the job. We were quite pleased to have him.

  And that’s how a pig got into our wedding party.

  It’s a good story, right?