by B. V. Larson
“That’s right. He’s permed as of this moment. That’s why I came to you.”
“I don’t have a revival machine in my pocket, James.”
“No, of course not. But you do have pull. You’re a big cheese at Central. Surely, you can get someone to do you a favor, right?”
She squinted at me. “No, I can’t. I don’t play that way. I’m not Turov. I do things by the book. I would like to help, but I don’t know how I could.”
“Huh… that’s a damned shame. I guess I’m wasting our time. Sorry.”
Floramel was studying her lush carpet, but I could tell she wasn’t seeing it. She was thinking hard. Just in case, I shut the hell up. Maybe she could come up with something she found acceptable.
At last, her eyes lifted again to meet mine. They were red-rimmed. Could she be crying? Over a frigging lizard? Sheesh. She’d never cried like this over me that I could recall, and I died all the damned time.
“I’ve got an idea. You remember the last time I was revived?”
“Uh… yeah.”
“Those people weren’t legitimate, were they? That revival was off the books.”
I squirmed a little. She was talking about the time Etta had gone nuts and killed her, then stuffed her into the trunk of a tram. We’d gotten help from Turov—a connection to a back-entrance group at Central that would do dirty revives for a price. Floramel had never gotten over that experience, and I didn’t think she ever would.
“I remember,” I said in a neutral tone.
“Why don’t you take him there?” she asked.
“Well… uh… I don’t know those people personally. I pulled a few favors myself to get you back and breathing again.”
She stared at me for a moment. “What happened that night, James? The night I died, I mean. You’ve never told me the truth. What made you kill me? What did I do?”
“Damn, girl! I didn’t kill you. I told you that.”
“Okay, okay, then tell me who did do it. Why not tell me the truth? At this point, how could it matter?”
I squirmed on her couch. If I told her Etta had done it, my daughter would be fired at the very least—deservedly so. “I can’t say. I’m sworn not to.”
Floramel looked down and nodded. “That’s what I thought. It was Turov, wasn’t it?”
“Uh…”
“I went back there a few days later, you know. I talked to everyone there. They avoided me, and they tried to chase me off, but I persisted and used my official credentials. Eventually, they admitted to me that Galina was there that night. That she left before the revival process had been completed.”
Oh shit. That thought was bright and sharp in my mind. It was true, Galina had been there. But she’d been helping me out, she hadn’t killed anyone. Not knowing what to say, I swallowed hard.
Floramel nodded as if her darkest suspicions were confirmed. “I owe you, then. Both an apology and a life. It never made sense to me that you’d performed that murder. We were supposed to go on a date. You had everything to lose and nothing to gain by my death.”
“That’s true.”
“So, Galina had me killed… but why? Out of jealousy?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes, rocks are best left unturned. Don’t go poking around under this one.”
She nodded again. “She killed me, or had me killed, then you talked her into reviving me. That witch…”
I heaved a relieved sigh. Floramel had built her own truth, and that kind of truth is always believed, whether it’s right or wrong. Feeling like a fish that’d slipped off the hook, I took a big gulp of coffee.
“You got anything to eat?”
She pointed vaguely at the kitchen. I got up and made myself a lame snack out of yogurt and cranberries and crap like that. When I turned around, I was surprised to see Floramel standing right behind me—standing close.
“I’m so sorry, James,” she said. “I’ve mistreated you and misjudged you.”
“Oh well… don’t worry about it. Say, do you want to go to breakfast? I’m kind of hungry.”
She smiled. “Okay.”
We walked out and made a nice morning of it. After I’d found a hash-slinging diner and downed their four-egg special, I was feeling really good. The rising sun outside the bay window showed the highway at the bottom and the bright, cheery sky above. I was almost glad I’d skipped right past March and April.
“…and we’ll go together,” Floramel said. She’d been talking for a while, but I hadn’t heard much of it.
“Uh… go where, exactly?”
“To the revival place, of course.”
“Oh… oh yeah. We’ll do that.”
“Maybe we should transfer Raash’s body scans and engrams onto a disk, first. That way, it will seem less odd.”
I blinked at her a few times.
“Uh…” I said, because I’d forgotten to tell her something important.
Reaching a hand down under the table, I touched my jacket pocket. Sure enough, a hard, oblong object was still in there. It was greasing-up the interior of my pocket pretty good by now. Just thinking about it made me grit my teeth.
“Floramel? There’s something else I’ve got to tell you…”
-12-
Floramel’s face was filled with both horror and incredulity.
“You have Raash’s claw?” she demanded.
“Yep. Got it right here.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that right away?”
“Well, I guess it kind of slipped my mind…”
Floramel chewed me out for a while after that, but pretty soon I stopped listening. Eventually, she got around to the obvious.
“So, we don’t have a real body-scan? His engrams are in your tapper, but what good is a mind without a compatible body to load it into?”
“Not much,” I admitted.
“What are we going to do? We can’t just go down to the backdoor at Central with a million credits and ask for a revive on a burnt alien finger. They’ll laugh us off the property—that’s if they don’t call the MPs.”
“Uh… did you say something about a million credits?”
“Yes. When I went there before—I told you this, weren’t you listening, James?”
“Sure-thing I’m listening! I always listen, girl. It’s just that I don’t remember all the details sometimes.”
“Well, as I said before, I asked what it cost for a revive like the one they gave me. It was an even million credits. Hegemony money only, of course.”
“Of course… damnation.”
“What is it?”
“It’s just that… well, I didn’t know that Galina had spent that much on you the last time around.”
Floramel looked at me oddly. “So, she spent the money? Not you? She must have been feeling guilty, or something.”
“I guess so.”
She looked at me for another suspicious minute. As a cunning dodge, I put on my patented dumb-ass expression and ate everything left on the table. At last, she moved on from this sensitive topic of who revived who and for how much—or worse why it all happened.
“How will we get a body-scan of Raash?” she asked. “I don’t know if it can be done from one burnt appendage.”
“I don’t know either, but I bet you can find a nerd at Central who has the answer.”
She bit her lip, and she nodded. She began to work her tapper again in earnest, and she ordered a big cup of ice.
“What’s that for?”
“The claw, of course. Put it in the ice. You should have done that hours ago.”
“Oh…”
I did as she instructed, and when I went to pay the bill she took custody of the big finger in the cup. I was glad to have it out of my pocket, to tell you the truth.
Soon, we were out on the town again. We were in her car, but she had me drive.
“Should we just head straight for Central?” I asked.
“Yes, we can get help from the labs. I have… a few favors I can call in whe
n it comes to pushing the limits of medicine and science.”
When we got there, the guards in the lobby wanted to search us. That was purely normal, but the thing in her big plastic cup definitely wasn’t.
“I can’t show you this,” she told them. “It’s related to a secret project.”
“Can we at least scan it for hazards?”
She allowed them to scan it, and I was impressed by the whole interchange. These hogs had never given me a break like this. I supposed it was because I was just some random legionnaire to them, not a high-level nerd-herder who worked in the deepest labs.
We went down, down, down into the depths under Central. We took a second elevator about two hundred levels down, then a third at level five hundred—that impressed me all over again.
“I’d heard there were more levels down here! Now it’s confirmed.”
Floramel glanced at me. “Don’t tell anyone, James… but there have always been more than five hundred levels.”
“What kind of freaky stuff is down here, anyways?”
“Things we don’t talk about. We don’t talk about the people down here, either.”
Shrugging, I let her have her little mystery. I figured I’d find out soon enough.
When we did finally get out at around floor minus five-twenty, it seemed to me that the basement was a little warmer this far down. I asked Floramel about it, and she confirmed the sensation was real.
“Every kilometer you descend into the Earth, the temperature and pressure rise significantly. At this depth, we’re experiencing several degrees of heat and increased atmospheric pressure on our bodies.”
“Huh… that’s weird.”
She didn’t answer me, she just kept walking. It seemed like her shoes were slapping on the hard floors for ten straight minutes. At last, she reached a zone labeled as “The Vault”. At least, that’s what the sign hanging from the ceiling said.
True to the name, there was a big round metal vault door nearby. The vault was hanging open, about a meter wide, and a guard sat at the entrance. He eyed us critically as we approached.
“Names?”
We gave our names, ranks, serial numbers, tapper ID codes—the works. The guard eyed me coldly when we were done.
“This man is denied entrance. In fact, you shouldn’t even have brought him down here, Director.”
“He has information vital to a project I’m working on.”
The hog looked at me dubiously. He could tell at a glance I was no scientist.
“I don’t see how that’s possible, but I’m going to let him in on your recognizance.”
“Good enough. Is there anyone else working in the consultation chamber?”
“No. The place is all clear. If you hear any voices, you should run out screaming.” The hog seemed to think this was hilarious, and he huffed out a laugh. We ignored him and went inside.
“What was that about?” I asked her. “Is this place haunted or something?”
Floramel looked at me seriously. “In a manner of speaking, yes it is.”
That was surely an odd response. Curious, I followed her skinny form into the vault. Had she said something about a “consultation?” What did that mean? Was there some kind of freaky-smart AI down here? That would be cool, and I was already thinking that Natasha would be jealous as hell if she ever found out I’d been on this little field-trip.
The interior of the vault was lit with a soft bluish glow. All the corners and crevices were pitch-black, but I could still see some things, and what I saw was alarming.
The place reminded me of an underwater base at the bottom of the ocean. Liquids in clear pipes chugged and gurgled above us. These pipes went back and forth all over the ceiling, crisscrossing everywhere. The soft blue light source seemed to be coming from overhead, beyond those pipes, and as it came through the flowing liquids it became kind of wavy.
There were rows of cylindrical tanks against the walls. These weren’t very big, each one was maybe the size of a party keg full of beer. The tanks were murky inside, full of dark films and oozes. I stepped close to one, peering inside. I tapped on the glass twice, but Floramel caught my hand before I could poke at it a third time.
“What is wrong with you?” she hissed. “Are you a child?”
I pointed at the tank. “I think there’s something in there.”
“Of course there is. These beings are tormented enough. Don’t bother them if you don’t have to. Don’t add anything new to their misery.”
“Huh?”
She walked away, and I followed her, glancing back now and then at the tank I’d been molesting. I thought I saw a little floating movement, but it could have been the flow of liquids in and out.
“What is this place? What’s in all these tanks?”
She glanced at me, and she seemed reluctant to speak. Taking in a deep breath, she finally spit it out. “This is a vault of the past. Central—the people who run it, I mean—they’ve seen fit to keep a repository of various minds they consider worthy of preservation.”
“Minds that are…” I looked around, and a chill ran through me. “You aren’t saying these are people or something? I thought they were some kind of fish-aliens.”
“Most are human.”
“How can they fit inside these little tanks?”
“Extraneous body parts have been discarded. Only the intellect has been preserved.”
“What? Holy hell… are there brains in there? That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”
“Not just brains. It depends. Some have heads, eyes. That one you were tapping at has some hair left. Didn’t you see it drifting around?”
I stared at her, then back at the tank. She was right. That movement—it could have been a floating lock of hair.
“Are they dead?”
“They are only partially aware. They sleep most of the time. When a consultation is required, we awaken them.”
“Holy bejesus…”
She led me through the tanks, which lined long twisting passageways, to the back of the place. There, she worked on a computer console. A face came up on the holotank—an entire disembodied head. The man was kind of old-looking. He was balding in front, and he looked at us like he could see us.
“Who disturbs my work?” he asked.
“Holy shit…” I whispered. “Is he in one of these tanks?”
“Shut up, James. Dr. Demikhov? Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you. I can see you. What do you want?” the hologram said with a distinct Russian accent.
“I need some advice. You’ve worked on many projects involving medical experiments. Have you ever tried to revive a being without a body scan?”
Demikhov squinted at her, then at me again. “I know you as Floramel. Please call me Vladimir.”
“All right, if it will help—Vladimir.”
“I’m lonely at times,” he said. “It’s always nice to talk to a woman.”
Floramel’s face tightened. She was trying to smile, but she was failing at it. “About my question, Doctor?”
“Yes, of course. Has this creature never been scanned? Can’t you use an old scan?”
“Normally, we could… but he left Earth’s service. He was purged.”
“I didn’t know that,” I interrupted loudly.
They both looked at me.
“Excuse me, Floramel, but who is this person?” Demikhov demanded.
“He’s an assistant. He brought the case to me.”
She began to explain, and as she did so, the weird scientist-head became interested. He seemed to find the problem fascinating. It was surely creepy to me. The finger in Floramel’s cup was less freaky than this dead scientist guy we were talking to.
“A curious problem… it will take some work to grow a body from a small sample. Normally, we scan it while it is complete and therefore filling in the lost parts is child’s play.”
“Of course, Doctor, but what recourse do you suggest in this particular
case? Is it hopeless?”
“No, no. Not at all. I’m not the best authority, however. You need a cloner.”
“Cloning is illegal!” I exclaimed. The other two gave me another sour glance, but they didn’t answer directly.
“Speak with Dr. Jianskui. He was a renowned specialist in illegal cloning before the Galactics came along to ruin everything.”
“All right. I’ll try to reach him. Thank you… Vladimir.”
“Floramel, one more thing: if you are successful, I would be interested in studying the process myself.”
She tilted her head and regarded him quizzically. “How so?”
“I’m surprised you don’t see the connection. If you could create a full body-scan from a scrap of material… well… perhaps a person such as myself could benefit from the same procedure.”
Floramel studied him for a moment. Her face was expressionless, but if I had to guess, I’d say she was close to horrified at the idea.
After a few rough moments, she forced a smile. “That would be a wonderful thing. We’ll look into it—if we’re successful.”
The ghostly hologram faded from view. I grabbed Floramel’s arm as she began punching in a new search.
“Who was that spooky guy?”
“That was Dr. Vladimir Demikhov.”
“I know that much. What did he do? Why is he in a tank down here five hundred levels under Central? Did his dog shit on some prime minister’s lawn?”
“He died a long time ago—technically. He was preserved by the soviets in the nineteen hundreds as a possible source of ingenuity in the future.”
My mind and my eyes boggled. “What? The nineteen hundreds? So he’s like… two hundred years old, or something?”
“Something like that. But not really. Think about him as a man who has been revived—in part—but after being dead for a century. He didn’t live for all that time, he was in limbo.”
“Wow… After a full century of being dead, somebody brought that poor bastard back as a turd in a tank? That’s rough. Are you going to help him out, someday?”
“What?”
“You said you would, if we were successful.”
