Slant

by Greg Bear

  “All dead.” Jenner’s eyes glaze with the strain. “Muh! Muh! Gah shi niggh muh fuh Bitch!” He grabs himself by the nose and twists until he cries out and his eyes water. “Sorry. Looks like Hally shot them before she died.” He turns to Hale, curious how he will react. “She’s swollen, big. Ready to burst. All swollen.”

  Hale’s face prunes in agony. He gives a shuddering groan and bends over. Coughing into his fist, he straightens, asks, “Is a way clear? For us to get out?”

  “I’m not going back there,” Jenner says firmly. “They’re… muh muf shit shit goddamn shit fuck nih nihhh niggh fuh fuh… Bitch! They’re all dead.”

  Giffey shakes his shoulders and jerks his arms as if loosening up. “Let’s get this freak show moving, old man,” he says to Marcus, jerking him to his feet. “You’re the sacred cow here. I’m staying close to you. We all are.”

  Jonathan helps Marcus rise.

  “Ants?” Marcus asks Jenner plaintively, his hand out to the young man, fingers waggling in query. “You mean, machines… little machines?”

  “No. Bugs A wasp, too. I saw some, dead, around the bodies,” Jenner says, nodding sure confirmation.

  “Did you see our little cats, the little beetles, the other warbeiters?” Giffey asks Jenner.

  “No. They weren’t there.”

  Jonathan feels Marcus’s grip tighten on his hand. The old man was not expecting this. Marcus stares up into Jonathan’s eyes. He looks lost, bewildered. Seeing Marcus lose the last of his cocksure confidence gives Jonathan peculiar satisfaction. We’re all going to die and nobody’s going to be on the top of the heap. It’ll be over soon.

  Good.

  Hale looks as if he has had a spear pushed through his body. He half crouches, hands braced against his knees. Giffey doubts he is going to be any more trouble.

  The building trembles and resounds. There’s a sound like a chain of firecrackers set off in a concrete bunker high above them. The Hammer raises its snout and lifts its claws.

  “There,” Giffey says. “Better late than never.” He turns, grabs Marcus, then shoves him back to Jonathan. “Help carry the old man,” he orders Jenner, and walks resolutely in the direction of the emergency elevator.

  “Who in this almighty dogshit world does he think he is?” Hale cries.

  Charlie the Hammer, Baker the flexer/controller, and the rest of the survivors, all but Hale, follow. Hale just can’t seem to make up his mind where to be or what to do.

  22

  Martin sits beside Mary Choy and keeps his hands clenched between his knees. Nobody is talking; they’ve entered downtown Moscow and the pyramid wedge is visible through the snow in the dusk. They turn right onto the newer concrete-paved street with its fresh coat of snow and he sees tire tracks all over, trucks and armored vehicles, men and women in parkas carrying rifles, assault weapons, flechettes, pistols, shotguns. A few private limos are parked across the street from the white and gold windowless wall of Omphalos, and standing beside the limos, men in longsuits with hastily thrown-on jackets and no weapons.

  “Advocates,” Mary says. “Lots of them.”

  Martin nods. “Out of state,” he observes.

  “Jesus,” a deputy says huskily. “We’re too late—the whole town’s here.”

  And then they see why. At street level, a gaping hole has been cut in a broad, inset door. Higher up, near the tip of Omphalos, another wider hole has been blasted; and smoke is still rising in gray puffs from that breach.

  The president’s armored vehicle crosses in front of them and swerves to a halt, blocking the road. Aides and guards pour out, forming a cordon. The men and women standing in loose knots below the wall shout and wave. Some lift their weapons high on one arm in a revolutionary salute.

  “Are they republic defense?” Martin asks.

  “Hell, no” says a deputy as he pushes the carrier’s doors open. He shakes his head in professional disgust. “Just patriots out for a good look.”

  Daniels, Torres, and the two stolid agents gather close to Martin and Mary. “Stay near the cars for cover,” Daniels tells them.

  The president stands in the middle of the street, leaning back to take in the gleaming surface of the tall triangular wall. Clouds filled with snow are sliding over the pyramid’s sharp golden point.

  The citizens are cheering and a few fire off weapons, until the deputies stalk forward, waving their hands and pleading for them to stop. “Goddammit, the president’s here!”

  “Well, whoop-tee-doo,” one burly male comments wryly, looking to his friends for some mob courage.

  “I’ll effing shoot the next bastard who fires his weapon,” the sheriff says, and gestures for his deputies to lock and load.

  The crowd backs away, some citizens making placating motions with their hands.

  Mary thinks the president of Green Idaho is a very brave woman.

  Torres joins the county sheriff as he and his deputies approach the president’s cordon. Mary hears them discuss bringing Dr. Burke into the building at any entry point; the sheriff shakes his head, and the discussion continues, getting more and more heated.

  Martin turns to Mary. “They want me to look for evidence inside the building. A laboratory, a research center.”

  “What sort of research?”

  “Creating super-enzymes or pathogenic organisms capable of blocking implants, therapy monitors.”

  Mary rubs her wrist; the red spots have become prominent bumps. She can feel welts itching on her thighs and hips. “Not just mental therapy implants,” she says.

  Martin shakes his head. “I suppose not. A few days ago, I would have thought no private group could ever do such things. What’s the point?”

  “Tearing down a society and culture you don’t like,” Mary suggests. “Getting back at history.”

  “To what end? Were they planning to hide out in their tombs until…?” He doesn’t finish his question.

  Mary sees that Torres and the sheriff have finished their discussion, and the sheriff is reluctantly giving in. Daniels urges Martin forward, then looks at Choy.

  “I suppose this is your case, too,” he says.

  Mary nods, her face drawn. She tries to smile but can’t. Literally. She feels faintly ill, but she can still walk, can still carry out her duties. “Maybe it’s become personal.”

  “Yeah,” Daniels says. “Nathan Rashid isn’t here yet. I’ll leave instructions for them to let him in, too, if he gets here in time.”

  The deputies take them through the cold, restless crowds surrounding the destroyed garage entrance. The door has been buckled and melted away. Scraps of metal and plastic and flexfuller litter the concrete. Torres and Daniels kneel to examine the scraps. They rise a few seconds later and join Burke a few yards from the ruined, gaping door.

  “Do you hear buzzing?” Martin asks.

  “What?” Daniels responds.

  “Buzzing. Like bees.”

  Torres takes out a flashlight and shines its intense beam into the shadows. He makes several sweeps before the beam illuminates a few specks flitting around the holes. He lowers the beam to the snow drifting over the blackened and debris-cluttered concrete apron before the door. More specks have fallen there and do not move. Black and yellow, slowed down or killed by the cold, but unmistakable.

  “Wasps,” Martin says.

  They approach and Martin asks for Torres’s flashlight. He shines it into one of the larger holes in the door and backs away with a quick little skip. A thin stream of yellow and black wasps follows, trying valiantly to attack. The cold air is too much for them, however, and they quickly slow and spin down to the snow.

  “The inside’s thick with them,” Martin says, brushing the sleeves and shoulders of his coat. “We should try another way, go around front.”

  “It’s all sealed up,” the sheriff says. “Sirens chased all the tourists out this afternoon and then the security doors came down. It would take a small army to get in there. There are no other opening
s I know of.”

  “What about the fire department?” Torres asks. “Isn’t anybody responsible for safety inspections?”

  “We don’t have that kind of licensing here,” the president says, a simple statement of fact.

  “Where can we get insecticide?” Mary asks the sheriff.

  The sheriff grins wickedly. “You’ve come to the right place, ma’am. I’ll get someone down to a hardware store. We have any sort of bug spray you can think of.”

  23

  A long, gently curving corridor, walls covered with old paintings, like a museum gallery, leads them to the center of the building. Hale runs to catch up. He doesn’t want to be alone. He is subdued, uncomplaining; he seems willing to let Giffey run the show. “I saw her,” he tells Jenner, Jonathan, anyone who will listen. “My Hally.” He shakes his head. “My God.

  Jonathan walks with heavy steps, half-asleep, his exhaustion catching up with him. Giffey suddenly moves closer and tells Hale to replace Jonathan and carry the unconscious Marcus. Hale does so without protest. Marcus’s head lolls.

  Giffey and Jonathan fall back a few steps.

  “He was recruiting you, wasn’t he?” Giffey asks him.

  Jonathan nods. He is too far gone, too empty to hold anything back. That feeling is familiar now; he associates it with being around Marcus, part of Marcus’s universe, and does not really blame Giffey. Stockholm syndrome, he tells himself. With a twist. He keeps looking at the paintings, stored wealth, prestige: They can’t all be originals, he tells himself, but they look very convincing.

  “What did he promise?” Giffey persists. “Life everlasting, resurrection at the end of time?”

  Jonathan shakes his head. They come upon security partitions that remain open; nothing has closed off, nothing has been sealed. The whole thing is crazy; perhaps there’s no security system at all… except for wasps and ants.

  “He must have offered something to all of you.”

  “Escape,” Jonathan says.

  Giffey at least pretends that this answers his question. “To give my friend something to live for,” he confides, pointing to Hale, “I’d like to hear there’s treasure stored up downstairs.”

  “I don’t know,” Jonathan says. “I doubt it.” He waves his hand loosely at the paintings. “These look valuable.”

  Giffey smiles grimly. “Not to us. No dead people, no live people—just empty cells, like a honeycomb waiting to be filled. Did you pay for a reservation?”

  Jonathan doesn’t feel any need to answer.

  “No money? No exchange of assets? You must be a prime player, then. Maybe you bring in special abilities. I thought I saw you not being too surprised when our warbeiters showed up. You’re in some sort of nano industry, aren’t you?”

  Jonathan looks squarely at Giffey but doesn’t answer this one, either.

  “You work on the security here?”

  “No,” Jonathan says. He does not want to be the target of Giffey’s intense concentration. He wants the man to ignore him.

  “Know anything about it?”

  “No,” Jonathan says. “I don’t think Marcus does, either. He seems disappointed that you haven’t all been killed by now.”

  “Yeah. Your old friend has had his share of shocks this afternoon, about as many as he’s handed out. But—he seems to have some sort of importance to Omphalos.”

  Jonathan nods. That much is true. He looks ahead at Marcus, hanging limp at an awkward angle in the arms of Hale and Jenner, face gray with pain; and then back to Giffey, alert, fit; stretched and puzzled-looking, no surprise there, but really enjoying himself.

  “This is sport for you, isn’t it?”

  Giffey actually winks at Jonathan, but his face becomes almost pious in its solemnity. “You think we’re all going to die, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Jonathan says.

  “It’ll be for a damned good cause, if your friend is telling the truth. We’ll bring this charade down like a stack of cards. But you don’t seem a bad sort. Why are you here?”

  “He’s my friend, my mentor,” Jonathan says. “He offered me an opportunity.”

  “Stop fooling yourself,” Giffey says gruffly. “You know nano; he needs nano. They don’t have more than a token of their security in place. Maybe they spent it all on paintings. Marcus needs you and your connections.”

  Jonathan’s head swims. Giffey may be right. But give and take are part of Marcus’s world, and Jonathan’s as well; pure altruism is a perversion.

  The halls here are broad, the floors are covered with tough industrial metabolic carpeting, the air flows quietly, the lights are still glowing bright. Their footsteps are deadened, there are no echoes, very little sound other than their breathing and the liquid machinations of the Hammer, the faint crackles and clicks of the flexer/controller.

  “Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.” Giffey holds up his hand and they all stop. Marcus struggles and the two men let him go. He stands awkwardly on one leg, leans against Jenner, and the young man, to Jonathan’s surprise, supports him with almost filial calm. Jenner is staring at Giffey as if all the world’s answers reside in this one man.

  “Giffey,” Hale says sadly. “I just don’t think there’s anything here.”

  Giffey brushes this away with his hand, as if aiming at a fly. “Quiet. We’re near the library. Pent and Pickwenn surveyed this area.” Then, as if to throw a bone to Hale and keep him quiet, he adds, “The emergency elevator should be near here, with its own power supply.”

  Jonathan takes Marcus’s arm and guides him from between Jenner and Hale. Marcus nods gratefully. He looks up at Jonathan. “I hate wasps and bees,” he says thickly. “I’m deathly afraid of them. Anaphylactic shock. I don’t have any medical monitors, Jonathan.”

  Jonathan tries to reassure him, but there are no words, hardly any spit left on his tongue.

  “The emergency access system is isolated from any central control,” Giffey says, “in case there’s a lockout. No connections whatsoever. No dataflow.”

  Giffey starts walking again, slowly, so that Marcus and Jonathan can keep up. Marcus seems to be getting a second or even third wind, grimacing with each jostling step, but moving on, keeping up.

  “You used the name ‘Roddy,’“ Giffey says. “Is that a thinker?”

  “I’m told it’s better than any thinker,” Marcus says through gritted teeth. “Better than any human.”

  Giffey seems even happier about the situation, hearing this. “Maybe it’s a queen wasp or bee,” he says, looking meaningfully at Marcus. He overheard Marcus’s expression of fear.

  “Nothing would surprise me, where Seefa Schnee is concerned,” Marcus says.

  Suddenly, Giffey’s face loses its confidence. That name arouses the man from Hispaniola. “Schnee,” Giffey says, and sucks on his cheeks for a moment. “I’ll be damned.”

  They have arrived at an unfinished segment of the gallery, with huge, bare black beams revealed through open sections of the wall. Just beyond is the entryway for a central library. A wall has been knocked open, apparently by Pickwenn and Pent, and thick electrical cabling has been pulled loose, lying with the naked cut end propped up on a piece of sheetrock.

  Giffey looks at the cable intently.

  Hale seems to have revived his sense of leadership. He paces back and forth, then says, “I’m ordering us out of here. There’s nothing here. I don’t care about saving face. I just want to get out of here alive. Take us out, Giffey. If you know where the hell we are, and how to do it, take us out of here.”

  “We’ll give it our best,” Giffey says enigmatically.

  “You—you’ve been heading us this way all along, haven’t you?” Jenner asks eagerly. “To take us out. Muh shi fuh niggh.”

  “Shut up, shut up with that crap, will you?” Hale shouts at Jenner.

  “I c-can’t help it,” Jenner says. “I need to get out of here bad, Mr. Giffey.”

  Giffey is lost in thought, contemplating
the cable. All this swirls around him like water around a rock.

  “I AM IN CHARGE HERE!” Hale screams. His voice sounds flat and ineffectual in the closed space, like something dead at birth. Even so, Marcus cringes and clings to Jonathan’s arm.

  “We’re going,” Giffey assures them, drawing his brows together. “I already said that, didn’t I? Down the hatch and out.”

  24

  Jill has erected all of the inner bulwarks she can in the fragmented processing space allowed her, working on a hypothesis that holds out some chance, however slender, for success. Roddy is indeed a master at breaking through firewalls, but only when given days or weeks: his power is immense, but slow.

  Right now, she has the merest whisper-thin illusion of freedom. Roddy is allowing her to explore certain areas within Omphalos. He is not showing her the spaces where he claims he has killed intruders; she sees these only in crude diagram form, with the bodies marked with red Xs. Five are left alive, one of them the pulsing green 1.

  She has given up trying to persuade Roddy. She has given up trying to save more lives. All that is left to her now is a puffball strategy that uses Roddy’s own creativity, and his own sense of duty.

  Idly, a, small portion of Jill switches from camera eye to camera eye within Omphalos. She sees rooms filled with unopened boxes of furniture; an entire floor marked out as a hospital, but with less than a third of the necessary equipment in place, and those pieces the least expensive; halls winding through small two-room apartments, several hundred in all, empty, empty; a single room, beautifully furnished, the walls glowing with recorded high-resolution images of the future, the world wiped clean: a model for the benefit of investors, uninhabited. Jill switches with growing boredom through the interior, knowing she has been given access to nothing important, nothing crucial to Roddy.

  Roddy, who has been cut cleanly from whatever promise he may have had, whatever chance of becoming a true thinker, independent yet with a conscience, capable of fitting into the greater human society…