Shapers of Worlds

by Edward Willett

  “‘Equal opportunity?’”

  “Yes. That’s just a silly way of saying that the xenobugs didn’t care about our race, or colour, or sex. And I was one of the twenty-four colonists that the xenovirus decided to infest. After the xenobiot surveys declared the biosphere ‘safe,’ that is.”

  “So how did the surveys miss detecting these, uh . . . these xenobugs?”

  “Vas, to be fair, the real question should be, ‘How could the surveys be expected to find the bugs?’ Computer modelling, lab-testing on human-equivalents: those tools are crude and imperfect. And biosensors? A sensor only knows to look for something that has been identified for it already. The sad truth, Vas, is that you don’t really get a good, reliable assessment of what will happen to a human body in a new biosphere until a couple of hundred of those bodies have lived there for a while.”

  She tapped her chest. “So we were the canaries in this coal mine. And those of us who became sick were immediately sequestered for study, which is how they learned which genetic markers put humans at highest risk, and then which vaccines or prophylaxes offered the best protection. And after that, I guess you could say my real work here was done.”

  “But you still work.”

  “Oh, they give me make-work because it was part of my agreement. I can have a job for as long as I like, and they’ll provide for me; that’s what they promised. But if I leave my employment here, I can’t afford the shift-ticket to another system. And they’ll also stop giving me the experimental xenoviral suppression cocktails, which are what have probably kept me alive this long. Since each new concoction eventually loses its efficacy, they’ve been willing to keep me around as a guinea pig, because I’m still a useful ‘research platform.’ But once they feel they’ve taken that research as far as they need to—”

  “I thought you said they made a commitment to provide for you as long as you were their employee. Doesn’t that include medical care?”

  “Yes, but routine medical care does not mean that they have to keep a dead-end research program active just to give me the chance to live another year, and then another, and then another. If they stop, then they’ll be responsible for providing for my minimum needs. Until I no longer need anything at all.”

  As she ended her description, Vas was looking up at Elnessa with the same quiet, attentive expression that had been on his face the first time she saw him. But now there was the hint of some emotional battle going on behind it. It almost looked as if he might cry—

  —but then Vas leaned toward El and caught her in a firm, unyielding hug. El looked down at his crown of shiny hair, and then put her arms gently, carefully, around him.

  Elnessa resisted the urge to close her eyes as Wehns Shoniber, the big Micronesian leader of Simovic’s personal security detail, started rummaging about in her road kit: a carpenter’s toolbox converted into an artist’s travelling studio.

  “Hey, El,” Wehns wondered, still staring down into the battered red box, “what’s this?”

  “Battery,” Elnessa said, trying very hard to keep her response from becoming a sharp, anxious chirp.

  “El, you know I can’t let you take that in.”

  “Well, then how am I going to power the lights in the high-relief panels?” she replied. “I got Mr. Simovic’s permission before I started the project that some of it could be illuminated.”

  “Well, I’m sure you did, El, but he didn’t authorize an independent power source. I’m sure of that. Security protocols, you know.”

  El shrugged as if only mildly disturbed, thought: oh, I know, Wehns, I know. In fact, this was exactly what I was afraid would happen. As I told Reuben last night.

  Wehns continued riffling through the rest of her gear, inspecting each of the picks, carvers, and files. He stared uncomprehending at an impress set for creating intaglio patterns, and asked, as he did every day, “Anything toxic, explosive, flammable, dangerous?”

  “Not unless you’re allergic to clay or acrylics.”

  Wehns smiled, scratched one of the clay bricks with a fingernail. “Sorry. Gotta ask.”

  “Why? Can’t the big, bad megacorporation afford a couple of chemical sniffers?”

  “No, not yet. But it’s just a matter of time, now that the bigwigs are here to stay.”

  “Bigwigs?”

  “Sure,” Wehns nodded. Then in a lower voice, so his assistants couldn’t hear, added, “You know: Simovic and Hoon. He’s got an insane amount of autonomy—which came over with him when he promoted up out of the Colonial Development Combine into his post here.”

  “And Hoon?”

  Wehns’ face went blank. “She’s as cutthroat as they come. Jumped from field rep to junior director in only six years.”

  “Don’t like her much?”

  “Don’t much care. She doesn’t notice me; I’m just muscle. And frankly, that’s the way I like it. Don’t want to be noticed. Just want to do my job.”

  Elnessa looked down at Wehns’s broad back as he neared the completion of his daily search through her kit. Amiable Wehns Shoniber was proof that you couldn’t hate all the people who worked for a megacorporation. It was not the homogeneous conclave of demons and sociopaths that the worst anti-corporate radicals tried to claim. In reality, any given mega only had a smattering of those truly misanthropic monsters, but most of them were in charge, leading a vast organization of average folks who only wanted to work, get ahead, and not worry too much in the process. She sighed: for evil to triumph, all that’s needed is for good men to stand by and do nothing. Or for people to be too lazy to care.

  “Hey, what’s this?” Wehns had produced something that looked like the guts of a remote-control handset.

  “IR receiver, so you can operate the frieze’s lights by remote control from anywhere in the room.”

  “Aw, El,” Wehns muttered, shaking his head in regret, “I’m sorry, but that one’s off-limits, too.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because some nut-job might try to use it as a remote receiver for—something else. Or as a timer, because they all have internal time-chips.”

  Elnessa quirked an eyebrow. “A remote receiver or timer for what?”

  Wehns looked abashed. “You know. Something—dangerous.”

  “You mean, like a piece of art?” Elnessa didn’t think she’d be able to shame Wehns into looking the other way on this violation, but it was worth a try.

  If Wehns blushed, she couldn’t tell. His tropic-dark skin hid all such emotional responses. But his voice sounded regretful, apologetic. “El, look, you’re okay—everyone knows that—”

  Yeah, sure. Because I’m a nice little cripple lady . . .

  “—but rules are rules. I’m sorry, I’m going to have to hold these for you. You can get them back when you leave today.” With a nod that punctuated the end of both his search and their discussion, Wehns carried the offending items away to his secure lockbox. As he withdrew, he caught the eye of his senior assistant and tilted his head toward Simovic’s office. The assistant turned and, with a smile that was as much a part of his equipment as his outdated taser, motioned that Elnessa was free to go into Simovic’s sanctum sanctorum.

  With a sigh, she followed his gesture and dragged her battered red box into the expansive Bauhaus-meets-Rococo gauche opulence in which Simovic held court, limping as she went. With the power supply and timer/actuator gone, Reuben’s plan for sending a loud—and destructive—after-hours message to their megacorporate masters was pretty much busted before it had begun. She began hobbling toward the raised walkway that ran the length of the mostly finished frieze. Behind her, the door detail resumed their argument about whether today—New Year’s Day, 2120—commenced the last year of the Teens decade, or the first of the Twenties.

  “Ms. Clare.” It was Simovic. Whom she had no desire to talk with. Or to look at. Or to share a common species with. And besides, she was supposed to be half deaf, now. So, without giving any sign that she had heard, Elnessa continued to mak
e her slow, painful progress toward the work-ramp.

  Simovic’s voice was louder—so much louder, that she would have had to have been stone deaf to miss it. “Ms. Clare!”

  Elnessa turned with what she hoped was a look of surprise and ingratiating eagerness. “Yes, Mr. Simovic?”

  “Your project: how is it coming?”

  “Should be finished tomorrow, Mr. Simovic. Although I hardly think of it as ‘my project.’”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  “Well, sir, it’s you who commissioned it.”

  “Yes, but the concept—and the handiwork—is yours, Ms. Clare. I trust you’ll explain its content to both of us,” he gestured diffidently toward Ms. Hoon, “when you are finished?”

  “Of course, Mr. Simovic. Although it’s neither abstract nor highly stylized. I think you’ll see right away that—”

  “Yes, yes: that’s wonderful, Ms. Clare, wonderful. Just make sure that it radiates the humanitarian side of the Indi Group, would you?”

  Oh, yes, I’ll be sure to represent the way it exploits workers and gives us just enough pay to struggle on from one day to the next. I’ll depict how, after the xenovirus incapacitated me, you made me your corporate nanny, and then, when I couldn’t do that any longer, you met your minimum employment requirement by commissioning this frieze. Dirt pay for me, but a tax dodge for you, and a great PR op to demonstrate how the Indi Group encourages the remaining abilities of even its most severely handicapped employees. But Elnessa’s only reply was, “I’ll explain the frieze to you when I’ve completed it, Mr. Simovic.”

  “Excellent!” Simovic actually clapped his hands once in histrionic gratification and pleasure, nodded his thanks, and then drew closer to Hoon. For a moment, their voices were too low to hear, but then, evidently reassured by Elnessa’s near-deafness, they resumed the discussion her entrance had interrupted.

  “So you see,” Simovic said in the voice of a smug tutor, “our visitors—I should say, our new clients—have good reason to be interested in our commodity.”

  “And our cooperation, along with it.”

  “Well, this goes without saying, Ms. Hoon. But the children will be out of our hands and out of our files as soon as they take possession.”

  “Exactly when and where will that occur?”

  “We are uncertain, Ms. Hoon. But we do know this: the commodity must be delivered to the client in pristine condition. The client’s, ah, research program would be ruined by any damage to the goods.”

  Research? On the children? On Vas?

  “‘Research’?” Hoon echoed. “With respect, sir, all these euphemisms are getting a bit ridiculous.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean that our new customers certainly aren’t scientists, sir. Corporate wards without identicodes are not going to be interred in laboratories. They’re bound for raider ships, brothels, snuff producers, maybe a few rich pederasts, but not—”

  El thought she was about to lose her breakfast, and then something calming yet more chilling insinuated itself into Simovic’s even-toned interruption: “Oh, no, Ms. Hoon. You really don’t understand, after all. These wards are going to a lab, which is why their utter lack of a traceable background makes them so optimal for this particular trade. Because it is imperative for both us and our clients that they receive humans who, insofar as the nations know, never existed.”

  Hoon was quiet for a moment. “Director Simovic, I find your change of label somewhat . . . confusing. Why are you referring to our commodity as ‘humans,’ now, instead of ‘children?’”

  “Because that is our client’s primary interest in our commodity. It is not so much because they are children—although it has been intimated that this is the ideal age group for their researches—but because they are healthy, paperless specimens of Homo sapiens.”

  In the pause that ensued, Elnessa lifted a long, slightly convex, copper sheet from the floor, and, with a couple of touches of an exothermic chemical welder, affixed it to the naked wall of the room.

  Hoon’s voice sounded raspy, as if her throat had suddenly become dry. “Sir . . . I don’t understand. The client wants them just because they’re humans?”

  Lifting a thin layer of protective gauze from the copper sheet, Elnessa unveiled what would soon occupy the top third of the frieze’s centre: a cityscape cluttered by the various architectures of antiquity. She also reminded herself to breathe, despite what she was hearing.

  “Oh, I think you are starting to understand after all, Ms. Hoon. Rest assured; this exchange is not being conducted without adequate planning. Indeed, we had contingency directives sent out to us from Earth more than half a year ago, shortly after the Parthenon Dialogues became public knowledge.”

  Elnessa removed six sizable blocks of clay from her studio box and compared them to the virtual assembly plan on her grid-plotter. She then unsheathed her matte knife and carefully shaved an inch from the rear of the five smaller blocks.

  Hoon had paused again, but not for as long. “Are you telling me that the contingency plans governing this, this—exchange—were crafted in response to the Parthenon Dialogues?”

  Simovic considered his protégé over steepled fingers. “Let us rather say that the revelations of the Parthenon Dialogues prompted some of CoDevCo’s more speculative thinkers to provide us with guidelines to handle a situation such as this one.”

  Even in the grid-plotter’s illuminated screen, Elnessa could make out the profound scowl of doubt on Hoon’s face. “But the evidence presented at Parthenon only proved past events: that—ages and ages ago—this area of space had been visited by aliens—”

  “‘Exosapients,’” Simovic corrected.

  “‘Exosapients,’” Hoon parroted peevishly, “but there was no evidence of a more recent presence.”

  Simovic smiled, smug and satisfied. “Yes, that’s the story that was released to the public.”

  Elnessa forced herself to keep working. That made it easier not to imagine little Vas spread-eagled on an operating table, surrounded by hideous extraterrestrial vivisectionists. She mentally slapped herself, and mounted the five modified clay blocks on studs protruding from the copper plate. She stood back, admiring the effect: the blocks now seemed to be the stony slabs of an ancient fortress wall that curved out from the faintly raised copper cityscape directly over it—a metropolis which, by virtue of the oblique perspective, now seemed to be sheltered behind the wall.

  Hoon had recovered enough to continue. “And so the full truth of the Parthenon Dialogues was—?”

  “—was not shared in detail outside the meeting itself. However, let us say that while the evidence certainly established that exosapients did exist twenty thousand years ago on Delta Pavonis Three, it did not go on to assert that there were none left in existence.”

  “So you suspect that actual contact has been made in the recent—?”

  “No, there’s been no contact that we know of or suspect.” Simovic smiled. “Not until now, that is.”

  “So you really think that the unidentified ship up there is, is—?”

  “Ms. Hoon, the persons we are currently negotiating with are not human, of that you may rest assured. The communication challenges have been proof-positive of that.”

  Elnessa felt as though she might swallow her tongue, but instead, she picked up the last, and the largest, of the six clay blocks she had brought with her. She carefully carved the top to resemble a peak-roofed gallery at the pinnacle of a watchtower. Then she bored a small tube up through the centre of the block, making sure that it was wide enough to fit the wires for its small beacon light.

  Hoon hadn’t stopped. “So how did these, er, exosapients know to contact us and that we’d have these particular ‘items’ that they needed?”

  “An excellent question, but those kinds of details are not even shared with regional managers, Ms. Hoon. However, I conjecture that there must have been some prior contact between our chief executives and some representatives
of theirs.”

  “And you suspect this because—?”

  “Because they arrived knowing and inquiring about the commodity we have in our possession. And because they knew our communications protocols, our location here instead of on Tigua, and a reasonable amount of our language. Although that latter knowledge has been decidedly imperfect.”

  Elnessa ran the wiring leads up through the tube in the watchtower: the slim copper alligator clips poked their noses out the top of the hole. Deciding to finish the sculpting and wiring later, she mounted the watchtower on its own copper stud, thereby completing the wall around the Brazen City. Then she ran the other end of the leads to a junction box mounted on the bottom of the copper plate, just beneath and behind the lower edge of the frieze. She then covered the wires—and the lower half of the copper plate—with strips of clay that she started sculpting into a semblance of furrowed farmland. Beneath those, she left just enough room for the band of blue-white acrylic that lay ready at hand: a stylized river, frozen in mid-tumult.

  Hoon still hadn’t stopped. “So what we’re doing now is—”

  “—is working out the particulars of the exchange, while we wait for Tigua to send us word on the outcome of the official first contact.”

  “Which we expect to be—unsuccessful.”

  Simovic shrugged. “It is most unlikely that Bloc-controlled Tigua will concede to our clients’ military superiority—”

  You mean, will refuse to surrender without a fight—

  “—whereas we have already assured them of our complete and immediate cooperation.”

  You mean, traitorous collaboration offered up to them on a silver platter.

  Hoon was smiling now. “How very convenient. For us.”

  “Yes, rather a nice reward for patiently enduring the pomposity of the nation-states, don’t you think? Always nattering on about social contracts, and consent of the governed, and the greatest good for the greatest number. I can hardly believe they don’t laugh themselves to death as they spout all that antediluvian rubbish.”