by Isaac Asimov
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Then why are you frightened? Why were you running? Is this what you were running from?”
“You don’t understand–”
Derec tightened his hand on Polifos’s arm. “Then make me understand.”
“Please!”
“Is this what you’ve been hiding from for the last twenty years? Did you make that?”
“No! I don’t know what that is! Let me be!”
Polifos squirmed loose from Derec only to encounter Palen, Masid, Harwol, and Thales/Bogard.
“Talk to us, Director,” Palen said. “We’ve got a lot of dead people we need explanations for.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that,” Polifos said.
“What did you do in Nova levis?” Derec asked. He pointed at the cyborg. “Is that a direct result of your work?”
Polifos tried not to look at it.
“Is that your work, Kyas Vol?”
Polifos paled visibly then. “You know?”
“You‘ve been hiding here under the protection of the Auroran government since disappearing from Earth after Nova levis closed down. Why? What were you doing there?”
“I’m trying not to die, damn it!” He whirled around, shoving Derec away. He backed against the transparency. “They killed everyone! Anyone who knew anything about it! Fos and Holani... Cortem... the documentation staff...” He was shaking now. “I went to the Aurorans because they were the only ones not involved. Terran authority, Solarians, corporates... Aurora had nothing to do with it.”
“With what?” Harwol demanded.
Polifos started sobbing. He slid to the floor, eyes streaming.
“We never really knew who we were working for, “he said finally. “The lab took subscriptions for stock. It was supposed to be a public corporation–we didn’t know...”
“Your mission,” Derec said. “What was your mission?”
“The plague. Stop the plague.”
“What plague?” Palen asked.
Polifos shook his head. “There wasn’t one. We succeeded.” He sat there, crying for a time, until he finally got control of himself. He stood and looked at the corpse. Baxin stood away from the body now, waiting. Polifos turned away. “Please. I don’t want to look at it anymore.”
Palen led them all to Baxin’s office. One of Harwol’s people got Polifos a cup of water. The director sat in a chair, trembling and sipping.
“What plague?” Derec prompted.
“Old, old nanotech,” Polifos said. “Do you know what UPDs are?”
“I know the term,” Derec said. “I’m still not sure what it means.”
“Untreatable Physiological Dysfunction,” Polifos said. “The term covers a lot of ground. Some of it is organic illnesses, chronic systemic dysfunctions, things we can only watch. We can’t cure them. In some cases, we can provide a little relief, but they’re all fatal, and usually pretty quickly. Ninety-eight percent of the cases are infants. The worst of them are nonorganic. We used to call them Vonooman Plagues.” He shrugged. “I don’t know why.”
He drank again, coughed, and set the cup down. “Before we outlawed robots–long time ago–we played with everything. One of our developments was nanotech. We still have a lot of it. Food production is a result of old nanotech. Some medical treatments, manufacturing–but most of it got thrown out with the robots. Largely because a few experiments went wrong and we created self-sustaining inorganic colonies. Parasites, really. They disassembled extant structures and used the material. There was a huge panic when the first of them erupted a few hundred years ago. But the fact is, they ate themselves out. It was fast and furious and so fatal that within ten, twenty years they died out all on their own, except for a few aberrant strains that stayed in the ecosystem and caused relatively minor problems since.”
“UPDs, “Derec said.
Polifos nodded. “Poor kids. They’d be born with a minor problem and through some vector we’ve never been able to trace, a colony of these things would take advantage and set up within the system. Within extreme intervention, death would be quick. We set up hospice centers for them.”
“They aren’t very well advertised, “Palen said. “This is the first I’ve heard of them.”
“Nobody wants to know about them. Anonymity is almost always desired by the parents, so it works out comfortably for everyone but the victim.”
“So what changed?” Derec asked.
“We found strains that were sustaining the victim. They were adapting. Why now and not before? Don’t know. And not in very many cases. But when we diagnosed the first adult cases of new infection, we knew we had a big problem.”
“Terrans?” Derec asked.
“Settlers,” Polifos said. “We needed to find a cure. To do that we needed to find the vectors and we needed to understand the nature of the host system. We set up Nova Levis as a research lab in prostheses to cover the actual research into the new plague.”
“And what was the vector?” Harwol asked.
“Only certain colonies. We found a series of enzyme deficiencies that produced chronic conditions that were treatable but rendered the system vulnerable to opportunistic infections. Those colonies tended to be the smallest and most isolationist. The influx of new colonists had been cut off for a variety of reasons–diplomatic, financial, other things. We were afraid that the plagues might adapt sufficiently well to become generally virulent and infect us. It was a small population that was at risk. We found a vaccine that was communicable by touch and could be spread through viral transfer.”
“How did you get around the immigration barriers?” Harwol asked.
“Baleys,” Derec said.
Polifos nodded. “Slipped them in through the back door.”
“What about the infants?” Masid asked.
“We continued our research on them. We found that the diseases had reworked their basic genetic structure in some cases, demanding augmentation in key organs. We thought we were finding a cure. We found that the disease had left us with an organic system perfectly suited to the introduction of symbiotic machine prostheses. But it was a holistic approach. We couldn’t fix one organ, we had to address the entire system.”
“You started playing with positronics,” Derec said.
Polifos nodded. “We got them through our Solarian contacts.”
“That means you. You’re Solarian.”
Polifos shook his head. “I was born here, on Earth. My parents were Solarian and I kept my citizenship, but I’ve never been there.”
“Then who was your Solarian contact?”
“Through the embassy mission. I never knew who.”
“Why was the lab shut down?” Palen asked.
“We started getting infants in large numbers. We’d developed a method of introducing self-sustaining support into the organic matrix, freeing them from the massive support systems they’d been forced to live in. The babies showed up, we’d refit them, and then they’d disappear. Director Holani was our head of staff. She found out they were going offplanet. She started demanding to know what was going on. She threatened to go public. That’s when everything was closed down.”
“So how does this explain that thing Baxin’s working on?” Palen demanded, gesturing in the direction of the cyborg’s remains.
“We stumbled on a process that would enable us to fuse machine and organic systems. The vonooman infection opened the way for the introduction of fully symbiotic artificial components. Puberty alters too much for reintroduction–a lot of it is mitigated by viral infections, RNA recompositions, stuff like that–but from infancy, we found we could grow a composite organism to adulthood. That’s when the traffic in infants increased.”
“So that thing may have been one of your patients?”
“May have,” Polifos admitted. “I went to the Aurorans when my colleagues started dying. I told them what was going on. They took me in and hid me.” He looked around at them. “I don
’t want to die.”
“Where’s the work being done now?” Derec asked.
Polifos frowned.
“Where are the cyborgs being grown now?”
“A sister lab was built on Cassus Thole,” Polifos said. “A transfer point for baleys to the other colonies where the plague was taking root.”
“Cassus Thole?” Palen asked. “I never heard of that one.”
“It’s an old name,” Masid said. “It’s now called Nova Levis.”
Yuri Pocivil did not try to run when he saw the cyborg corpse. He swallowed, hard, and stared at it. Slowly, he turned to Palen.
“I don’t know anything,” he said.
“You worked the baley run out of Petrabor,” Palen said. “You worked with this thing. We have documentation on it, so don’t bother lying.”
“I’m just a dockworker, that’s all,” Pocivil said.
“Running baleys?” Masid asked.
“Baleys, drygoods, food, manufactured components–it’s all just cargo. My job is strictly dockside. I don’t know anything.”
“You know who pays you,” Palen said. “You know your contacts. You get your assignments from somewhere.”
“I also know what ‘dead’ means,” he said.
“You should, “Derec agreed. “You already are. That was coming to kill you. “He nodded toward the cyborg. “You know that.”
After a time, Pocivil nodded. “I got caught. That’s against the rules.”
“So why protect them?” Palen asked.
Pocivil shrugged. “A gato’s got to have standards.”
“Pretty low ones, in your case, “Masid said. “You know all those baleys were murdered. The last shipment you sent up here.”
Pocivil sighed. “Shit. I guess it doesn’t matter. You won’t find them, anyway.”
“Why not?” Palen asked.
“Because the operation is over. It’s being shut down. I was on my way home when your people grabbed me.”
“Shut down,” Derec said. “You mean, no more baley runs? No more–”
“Nothing, no more anything. They’re closing up shop. It’s over.”
“Why don’t you tell us where and who, then?” Palen asked.
Pocivil let out a long, shuddering breath and turned away from the autopsy theater. “What do you want to know first?”
Derec watched through the transparency as Polifos assisted Baxin in removing the brain and brain stem from the cyborg body. He finally realized what bothered him about the scene: the colors were all wrong. The blood was nearly purple, organs were gray or bronze colored, nothing looked like it came out of a human body.
He glanced back at the robot. Thales/Bogard remained nearby, silently observing the same operation.
“What do you think, Thales?” Derec asked. “Or should I call you Bogard?”
“Either, both, or some new name,” the robot replied. “What do I think about what, Derec?”
“This,” Derec said, gesturing at the cyborg.
“I have not decided yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“The cause of Coffee’s collapse was due to a misidentification. It believed that it was intervening against a robot. When he injured the being and realized that it had just assaulted an organic form, it naturally recoiled, assuming it had just attacked a human.”
“Assuming?”
“I am not certain this construct qualifies as human.”
Derec felt a disquieting coldness form around his thoughts. He stared at the robot for a long time.
“You be sure to let me know when and what you decide,” he said finally.
“I shall, Derec.”
Twenty-Six
ARIEL FELT INTENSE relief upon seeing Coren Lanra.
He slumped in one of her sofas, head propped on one hand, elbow on the sofa arm, eyes half-lidded. He looked profoundly weary, fighting sleep. He smiled crookedly when he saw her, and made an effort to sit straight. He put weight on his left arm and winced.
“As long as you’re here,” Ariel said, “we’re getting that shoulder looked at.”
“No time,” Coren protested. “I had an interesting talk with the police last night.”
“Don’t avoid the issue, you have no choice. I won’t continue this with a damaged partner.”
His eyebrows raised. “When did we become partners?”
“I’m not sure. Am I assuming too much?”
“That depends.”
Ariel ignored a spike of annoyance. “It always does.” She started unsealing his shirt. “You ‘re still getting looked at.”
“That was never a question. “He smiled.
Ariel hesitated. Then, impulsively, she leaned forward and kissed him, very quickly and lightly, on the mouth. Coren stared at her, startled and, she thought, pleased. She continued removing his shirt.
“What have you been doing since Taprin?” he asked.
“Hiding for the most part. Turn around.”
“The police surgeon said it’s cracked.” ‘
The bruise was spectacular. “Is there some point you need to prove by finishing this in pain?”
Coren laughed sharply. “I told you I made an appointment with my doctor. You didn’t answer my question.”
“Nor did you.” She stood, his shirt in one hand. “But you will have that looked at.”
He shook his head. “I need to talk to Jeta. Tresha. Whatever her name is. Where is she?”
“Three floors down, under guard. She’ll wait.”
He tried to stand. “Then I have to go to Nova Levis.”
Ariel frowned. “The colony?”
“No, the lab.”
She pressed down on his shoulder. He winced but sat back down. “Don’t bother. It really was dismantled.” She turned toward her robot. “Jennie? Who’s working the infirmary now?”
“I don’t suppose I can reason with you,” Coren said.
“Dr. Jerios,” the robot replied.
“Of course you can,” Ariel told Coren. “Just do what I say. Thank you, Jennie. Let her know I have a patient for her–we’ll be right down. And bring me a robe, please.”
Coren let his head fall back. “Can’t she come here?”
“She can; her equipment can’t. Come on. Up. One more trip before you can sleep.”
“Make up your mind, will you? Up or down.” Coren grunted as he got to his feet. He stumbled. “Oops. One stim too many, I think. What do you mean, Nova Levis was dismantled?”
“What I said. After it was closed down, the facility was gutted and converted to its present use. There’s nothing there.” Ariel took his right arm and guided him toward the door. “Jennie, route my calls to the infirmary.”
“What about Wenithal?” Coren asked.
“He’s fine. Same floor, separate quarters, under guard.”
“Guard?”
“Infirmary first.”
“I need to talk to Tresha first.”
“No, first–”
“She’s not Jeta Fromm.” Coren disengaged from Ariel. “The police identified Jeta‘s body in Lyzig. We need to speak to Tresha now.”
Ariel regarded him for a moment. “All right. We can stop there on the way.”
“Fine.”
They continued on down the corridor to the elevator.
“Ambassador Burgess?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
Coren smiled. “The list is too long. Just say ‘you’re welcome.” ‘
“You ‘re welcome.”
The elevator let them out on the guest floor. Ariel led the way to the rooms.
A tall, uniformed Auroran stood outside each of two doors along the corridor. Ariel led Coren to the nearest. The guard bowed slightly and stepped aside.
Tresha sat on the bed, pillows behind her, watching the subetheric across the room. Ariel glanced at what was being broadcast–it was a very old hyperwave drama; she remembered it vaguely, somethi
ng based loosely on the first modern Terran permitted to visit a Spacer world after the long quarantine of Earth–and stepped in front of the set, blocking the woman’s view.
“I hope you’re here to apologize,” Tresha said as she touched the remote to switch off the subetheric.
“For what?” Coren asked. “Not recognizing you sooner?”
The woman laughed. “Just who is this ‘Tresha’ person you keep talking about?”
“You tell me,” Coren said. “I’d like to know why she killed Jeta Fromm.”
“Tresha shook her head. “Look–”
“Jeta’s body was found... and identified.”
Tresha stared at him, eyes narrowed. Finally, she shrugged.
“Why kill her?” Coren asked. “She was just a data troll.”
“Why worry about her?” Tresha returned. “She was, as you say, just a data troll.”
“Did Mikels order it?”
Her eyes widened briefly. Then she shrugged again. “If you know so much...”
Ariel said, “We have both Kyas Vol and Yuri Pocivil in custody. Your cyborg is dead–it’s being dissected even as we speak. So, if you want to play guessing games, it’s all right with me, but we don’t have to participate.”
Tresha pursed her lips. “You ‘re talking to the wrong person, gato. I don’t know anything.”
“Nonsense,” Coren said. “You were the contact for Damik and Wenithal. You handle all the legwork on the ground.”
“So the messenger is supposed to know what the message is?”
Ariel waited for Coren’s move. He said nothing. Tresha looked at him, then at Ariel, her eyes no longer so certain.
“Ask,” Tresha said.
“Why’d you kill Jeta?”
“She was nosy. She poked around into the wrong places.”
“How’d you pass for her in Lyzig?”
“They didn’t know her. I moved in there shortly after we terminated Fromm.”
“Why take her place?” Ariel asked.
“Common sense. If one commission for that data had come her way, more might. I wanted to find out how many vectors there were leading to that information.”
“And the baleys?” Coren asked quietly.
Another shrug. “I don’t think I’ll answer that.”
“Do you think you’re getting out of here without answering it?” Ariel asked.
