Slant

by Greg Bear

  Moscow itself is a dreary, depleted-looking city. Marcus says little as they drive through the gray streets. Even spots of cold sunshine do little to enliven the unkempt buildings. This kind of freedom comes at a price; apparently: urban malaise pointing to listless, discouraged boredom.

  “It’s a pity,” Cadey says. Calhoun nods. Jonathan senses no real sympathy. Omphalos is armored, separate; responsibility toward the citizens is simply not an issue. They have chosen their own fate, after all.

  Marcus and Cadey point to Omphalos, their faces brightening. “There it is,” Marcus says, and they stare out the left window, over the low-slung unpainted houses and apartments lining Constitution. The wedge of white and gold rises like a Wagnerian fortress. The limo turns left and they slide down a wide, long boulevard which Jonathan does not catch the name of, but whose small retail strip malls frame Omphalos with stunning contrast.

  Jonathan looks away. He’s feeling more electric and fragile than enthused; the tide is turning again, and he does not like this ebb and flow. The strip malls consist of second-hand stores, small groceries, a brothel (“not a prosthetute in this republic—real real real,” a sign announces) and several small casinos. The older-model automobiles and trucks passing by—some twenty years old and clearly powered by methane or alcohol engines—often have panels of clear flexfuller mounted on the side windows.

  “A real Western town,” Calhoun remarks for Jonathan’s benefit.

  “Rough-and-tumble,” he responds.

  “Howdy, partner,” Burdick says, smiling at Calhoun.

  “There is a fine resort ranch not far from here,” Cadey says. “My family spent a week there three years ago. Not very dangerous at all; but we had our own guards.”

  Hiram once expressed an interest in biking through Green Idaho once he graduated from university. Green Idaho has the mixed distinction of being a rite of passage. It’s taken the place of the Third World as a destination of challenge and adventure for wealthy young Americans.

  Jenner stops the limo at a thick green translucent barricade, ten or twelve yards from the east side of Omphalos. The building towers over them; they lie in its afternoon shadow.

  “The building’s talking to us. I’ve given it our appointment sig.”

  “Do what it says,” Hale suggests dryly.

  Giffey feels as if they’re already in, already swallowed. Jenner looks through the window to him for some suggestion of mood. He gives the boy a small grin and a thumbs-up. Jenner returns the gesture and seems a lot happier. They’re all equal in this now. Preston reaches forward and clasps Hale’s hand.

  The barricade, green and deep as the sea, drops into the ground and a door to the garage opens in the wall. The door is about twenty feet wide and smoothly ascends to a height of ten feet. The limo moves forward under Jenner’s guidance.

  It takes just fifteen seconds.

  Jonathan taps his fingers against the window glass as their limo stops at a dark green translucent barricade. After a brief pause, the barricade slowly sinks into the concrete and a door opens in the white wall beyond. The limo rolls through the door and joins a second, identical limo in a small holding area.

  “More prospects,” Marcus says. The occupants of the two vehicles look through the windows at each other across the two meters separating them. Someone waves from the other car, a woman Jonathan thinks, though it’s hard to be sure through the semi-silvered windows.

  “Who, are they?” Burdick asks with social curiosity. He’s the kind of man eager to establish contacts; meeting other rich folks could be very useful.

  “I don’t know,” Marcus says. “I assume they made arrangements through LA or Tokyo.”

  Cadey seems concerned. “Investors for freezing down, right?”

  “I presume that’s all they know,” Marcus says. “We’ll separate in the briefing area. “They’ll get their tour, and we’ll get ours.” Marcus glances at Jonathan. “Not my decision,” he says.

  Jonathan’s feeling of separation grows more intense. The sight of Omphalos does not affect him the way it does the others. It looks graceless and overblown, like an Albert Speer monument.

  He struggles to keep himself on an even course. Marcus is very sensitive to what others are thinking. Jonathan does not want to appear out of sync.

  “Our colleagues,” Hale says in the passenger compartment, his voice slick with contempt. Giffey doesn’t feel one way or the other about the folks in the other limo; everybody has to make their way in the world. Greedy rich folks have a right to their little conceits; after all, without them, there wouldn’t be Omphalos. He just hopes they’re flexible in their expectations.

  “Let’s not act like a bunch of thugs,” Preston warns. “Try to be a little classy. Upper classy.”

  “Right,” Pent says, and his face goes unconcerned, formally flat, like an all-controlling manager in a vid. His voice deepens a little and his accent shifts. “How am I doing?”

  Preston smirks and turns away.

  Pickwenn sobers also. Jenner should just continue playing the driver, Giffey thinks. Hale appears pale and out of sorts.

  Ahead, a green panel light comes on and a second door opens in the wall.

  “They’re letting both of us through,” Jenner says, a little surprised.

  “Beyond here, the armor’s very light,” Giffey says.

  “Shit, as if three feet of flexfuller isn’t enough,” Pent says.

  “Language, gentlemen,” Preston warns.

  The doors on the limousines open and ten people step out in two groups of five into the garage reception area. Jenner remains seated in the driver’s compartment. The lighting is clear and white, with a slight snowy tint; the air is warm, as if the room has been exposed to afternoon sunshine, and very clean, odorless, flavorless.

  “Hello,” Marcus says. The other group nods. Marcus introduces himself. Jonathan, stares at the prospects, a varied lot to say the least, and wonders how wealthy they can really be; Boise is after all part of the United States still, albeit known for a little more rough and tumble market and business style, and the fortunes made there are sometimes less than spectacular. Connection is everything on the dataflow river.

  Hale and Marcus chat idly, waiting for the building sentinels to finish doing whatever they need to do.

  Giffey examines the four men and one woman. Five of them, six on his team. Almost a one-to-one match in a rough. He’s feeling smooth, a little bored, and there’s a buzz in the back of his mind. Some urge to urinate right out in the open. That’s what he should do to show his contempt.

  He pushes that back with hardly any effort. It’s a strange impulse, but he’s used to the buildup of tension. Tension, all it is. Family tension.

  Marcus and Hale are discussing the cost of separate freezing or warm sleep facilities in the general market, compared to the package deals being offered in Omphalos. Marcus sounds a bit like a salesman.

  Jonathan worries about Chloe. Perhaps she has come out of her misery now and can talk straight.

  This is taking a long time. He had expected that anything Marcus would be involved in would run smoothly—

  A large hatch opens in the wall, six feet above the floor of the waiting area, and steps emerge from below the door with an oily, metallic sliding sound.

  A tall, slender arbeiter appears in the door and moves out onto the broad first step. The design confuses Jonathan’s eye for a moment; it is smoothly insectoid, like a half-developed larva carved out of dark steel, its upper limbs folded into long grooves in its thorax. Its four lower limbs push from a bulbous base, thick and flaring distally, each terminated by flexible feet. The feet carry it smoothly down the first three steps. At the bottom of the steps, a human figure appears out of thin air, middle-aged and female, with gray-blond hair and a stocky, strong body. Her arms show bare and strong in a sleeveless blouse, and she is wearing Gosse pants, like jodhpurs though more flattering.

  Jonathan does not see her appear; he has been looking
at the occupants of the second limo, taking his eyes away from the arbeiter for just a second. His startled look amuses Calhoun and she leans to whisper in his ear, “Projection.”

  “Welcome to Omphalos,” the projected woman says, in a voice thick and motherly, like a creamy soup. She smiles and beckons up the steps. “My name is Lacey Ray. I’m sorry I can’t be with you in the flesh, but I’m with you live, at least, and I can see everything you see. The arbeiter is my surrogate. I believe your groups will be going on two different tours—”

  Giffey eyes the door and glances at Hale. Preston steps forward to stand by the right front wheel. They do not want to be separated from the limo, not yet, and that door must be kept open. Giffey recognizes the arbeiter—it is a modified Ferret, supplied with a new shell but essentially the same in anatomy. If it is the surrogate, the source of the projection and the woman’s remote observer, it is doing double duty; perhaps it is a remotely directed unit, cheaper and less flexible than an autonomous model. A happy thought strikes him: maybe Omphalos does not have its full complement of defenses in place. Too much to hope for.

  The other visitors have fixed their attention on the projected woman.

  Jenner, inside the driver’s compartment, pops the trunk. “Handbags and pads,” Pent says smoothly to Hale as he and Pickwenn walk casually to the back of the limo. “Right,” Giffey says.

  Pickwenn passes by the woman named Calhoun and smiles at her. She gives a little shudder; Pickwenn and Pent do seem exotic for this crowd, Giffey observes.

  “We’ll be checking all bags and other handhelds before we take our tour,” the ghost of Lacey Ray says, warm and friendly. “Then we’ll—”

  Jonathan diverts his attention back to the limo, as does Cadey. The dark-haired woman in the other group, with a tight-lipped smile, nods to them. The gesture seems nervous and false, certainly unnecessary. Jonathan frowns; Cadey’s face is blandly observant. Calhoun turns away from the image’s introduction. Marcus is still fixed on it.

  “—be giving our first group, Mr. Hale’s group, an introductory tour beginning in the health and diagnosis center—”

  Jenner and Pickwenn, at the rear of the limo, bring up not handbags and pads but spray guns attached to flexible hoses. The others back away just in time to avoid the sudden shower of grayish pink fluid. Pickwenn covers the Hale limo with this substance, which clings like paint, and then diverts the spray to the door behind them.

  Simultaneously, Jenner tugs at his hose and aims the spray directly at the warbeiter. The modified remote-control Ferret takes the spray full in the muzzle.

  Suddenly and startlingly, it spasms, falls to the ground, and starts to shed its surface layers of armor as if molting.

  Jonathan backs away with a sharp jerk, dragging Marcus with him. He recognizes the spray. It’s military grade nano; judging by its color, it’s fully charged and programmed.

  Marcus lets out a startled squawk.

  Giffey reaches into his longsuit pants pocket, pulls out a gray tablet the size of a skipping stone, jumps forward and past the shivering, juddering Ferret, stands by the steps, and tosses the tablet into the interior hatch, which is already beginning to close.

  Jonathan closes his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut. The blast deafens him—they are nearer to the door—and knocks him from his feet. He slams into Calhoun, and Marcus is pushed back on both of them as they fall on the hard floor. The air is filled with a wretched, nauseating smell like ammonia and gravy.

  Someone bends over the three of them. “Don’t touch this stuff,” the person says. Jonathan opens his eyes a little wider and stares up at the driver of the other limo. The man’s scalp is twitching wildly. He holds his spray nozzle up and away from them. “It’ll eat you even faster than the wall.”

  Something is sizzling. Jonathan rolls slightly, withdrawing his leg from Calhoun as she stirs, looking over Burdick as he rises to his elbows, and sees the wall and second broad doorway behind the limos. The material is covered with bubbling grayish-pink foam, and it is the foam that is sizzling. The air is hot near the foam.

  Looking to his left, he sees the first limo sag like a melting toy where it has been sprayed. Something is taking rough shape within the slumping material.

  “How long?” someone asks.

  “The Ferret’s down but it’s still trying to fix itself,” another voice says.

  The driver helps them sit up and squats beside them.

  “Sorry about this, friends,” he says, brushing his buzz-cut blond hair with his free hand. “We’ve got some work to do. Best to stay out of the way for the next few minutes.”

  “—half an hour, forty-five minutes,” says the compact, tough-looking man with grizzled features and graying hair. Jonathan tries to remember his name. Jack something.

  Jack reaches down and pulls Marcus away from the unsprayed limo, props him against a far wall, with a good view of the squirming arbeiter, trapped in its own half-shed and melting exoskeleton. Then he comes over to Jonathan and Calhoun and asks if they can move on their own.

  “I think so,” Calhoun says, holding her hands to her ears, touching the lobes, looking at the fingers to see if there is any blood.

  “I can walk,” Jonathan says. He can’t see Cadey or Burdick. The grizzled man takes his shoulder and pushes him along with a strong but not cruel grip.

  “What is this, an assault?” Marcus asks, his voice high and shrill.

  The grizzled man shakes his head. “We’re just robbers, that’s all. We’d better get everybody out of here. Jenner! Spray that Ferret again and before you leave, give it another tablet.”

  The broad room is filling rapidly with sizzle and smoke and steam.

  “Don’t touch anything,” the grizzled man reminds them. “We’ll be moving out of here shortly. It’s going to get hotter than a boiler.”

  Jonathan comes around the right rear of the limo and sees Cadey on his knees, and Burdick on his back. Cadey pulls one leg up and stares fixedly at the grizzled man.

  “You’re the leader,” he says accusingly.

  Robbery, Jonathan thinks. The dark-haired woman has taken charge of them now. Calhoun is nervously, jerkily trying to ask her questions, but the woman just shakes her head and pushes them toward the jammed and bent stairs and the shattered door. Then, as an afterthought, she produces a small flechette pistol and points it at them.

  “What are they doing with that spray?” Calhoun asks Jonathan. Her eyes are dilated and her skin pale. Jonathan, with sudden horror, realizes that she is going to die. Maybe we’re all going to die, but she knows it.

  “They’re going to build some things,” Jonathan says, pulling himself up sharply. “Tools. Military arbeiters.” He is not privy to all the details on MGN, but he has heard disturbing stories. Stacks of interconnected cards no bigger than a hand that can unfold—

  “Quiet,” the woman with the flechette pistol says.

  Marcus shoulders past Jonathan, to the front of the group, and the woman and Burdick follow close behind Cadey, at the rear.

  When all the people are out of the garage except for Jenner, Giffey surveys the two limousines and then bends over the Ferret. Jenner kneels on the other side of the warbeiter, frowning in concentration. The warbeiter has stopped struggling; Giffey recognizes that it is reassessing its predicament. Hit with the MGN spray, it tried to shed its first layer of armor and the nano with it, but the spray acted too quickly and warped and fused the scraps to bind the warbeiter’s limbs. If it can’t find a way out of its current fix, it will deactivate, perhaps destroy itself—not explosively, not in its current deployment, but sufficient to render itself useless to the enemy.

  Giffey suspects it will take too long for the MGN to coerce and convert the warbeiter. It will have to become simple raw material, like the limos and the garage walls.

  Waves of moist heat fill the room.

  “Disappointing,” Jenner says, looking around. “This is too easy. Where are the others?”

  “
Just blow it and leave,” Giffey says. “The goop will use what it can. And take a canister with you; there’s more than enough nano in here now, and we may run into more units deeper in.”

  “Right,” Jenner says. Giffey is up the stairs. Jenner shoulders a canister and straps it on, then hooks the sprayer to the valve. He stuffs a tablet between the warbeiter’s half-shed armor and its carapace and scrambles after Giffey. They round a corner in the hallway before the warbeiter explodes. Smoke and a pulse of hot air catch up with them and they bend over and run. Jenner likes this; he’s grinning like a boy with his first BB gun.

  They have at least half an hour before the hot room begins to produce their tools, maybe an hour before it gives them what they need to move on. Omphalos has not responded in any surprising way. They are inside, on schedule, even ahead of schedule.

  Bristow, Reilly, Burdick, Calhoun, Cadey: they give their names to the woman, who records them on a pad. They are in a small waiting room furnished with low adaptive couches. What appear to be original paintings and prints, some of them recognizable and perhaps valuable, hang on the walls, and bronze and steel sculptures fill the corners.

  The woman asks for their sigs and home addresses.

  “Why do you need all this?” Marcus asks. “You going for ransom?” He is breathing heavily and sweating profusely. Jonathan’s reaction is unpleasant but less extreme; he is sharply focused, as if from drinking too much coffee.

  “Just give them to me,” the woman says flatly. Burdick complies first.

  Three men enter the room. One of them up close is thin and white and beautifully ugly, could be a Yox horror star. The second looks like a Pacific Islander. The third tries to carry himself with an air of authority, but this is weakened by uncertainty. Jonathan is convinced that it is the grizzled older man, still outside the room, who is really in charge.