Slant

by Eikeltje

  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

  lthe

  warbeiter. The modified remote-control Ferret takes the

  full

  spray

  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.

  /

  SLANT 243

  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, tohng 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 fiechette

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  GREG BEAR

  "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 itselfnot 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.

  4

  "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.

  /

  SLANT 245

  Bristow, Reilly, Burdick, Calhoun, Cadey: they give their names to the woman,

  who record
s 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.

  There are five men and the one woman and they are equipped with high-level

  MGN, the most closely guarded weaponry of any in the U.S. defense

  arsenal. Jonathan has never heard of full-charge MGN being used outside of a

  combat zone, even in live-fire military exercises. Nutrim, his company, has a

  contract to supply the nutritional and chemical transmitter components of

  MGN, but he has never been cleared to visit the plant devoted to fulfilling

  that contract.

  A loud bang echoes from the hall. Everyone jerks in surprise, and then

  Pickwenn says, "Good-bye Ferret."

  The odd pair, islander and horror star, do a little dance and smile at their

  success. The horror star looks at Calhoun and gives her a small wink. Calhoun

  turns away.

  "You can call me Hale," the third man says. "Nathaniel Hale. After the

  patriot."

  The woman smiles.

  "This is Preston," Hale continues, "and these two are Pent and Pickwenn.

  I'd like all of you to survive this with us, so please do what you are told and

  answer our questions quickly and truthfully."

  The other two men enter the art-filled waiting room. The grizzled older

  man walks around, examining the paintings and sculptures with a small grin.

  All things are grist for his mill. The youngest, little more than a boy, with

  the scalp that twitches, studies the sculptures as well, reflexively fingering his

  shouldered sprayer. The room is getting a little crowded.

  "You'll never get out of here alive," Marcus warns them, his voice low. Pent

  moves closer to Marcus, looking him over curiously. The grizzled man continues

  to smile; his eyes are on Hale.

  "Do you understand all the defenses?" Hale asks Marcus.

  "I know they're deadly," Marcus answers defiantly.

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  GREG BEAR

  "Care to tell us anything about them?" Hale asks. Pickwenn and Pent

  squeeze in around Marcus, pull him forward.

  "Careful," Jonathan says to Marcus. For his pains, Pickwenn shoves a fist

  up close to his face.

  "Enough," Hale says. "Some of you will go with us. The rest will stay in

  this room for now."

  "You're not going to last out the hour," Marcus says. "And if we're killed,

  that doesn't matter. This building is made to survive."

  "We took out your goddamned warbeiter," the young man with the active

  scalp says. "Antiquated piece of crap."

  Marcus says nothing to this. Jonathan does not know whether his mentor

  is bluffing or serious. Marcus has depths, and no one could accuse him of

  lacking courage. But his voice trembles and he is clearly shaken.

  It's obvious Marcus isn't going to be any immediate value as a source of

  information.

  "I want them spread out, two coming with us," Hale says. He points to

  Jonathan and Marcus. "You and you. Hally, you'll stay here with the other

  three."

  The woman, Hally, lifts her eyes but does not argue.

  "Jack?" Hale says.

  "Ready," the grizzled man says.

  "Let's check it out."

  Jack takes Jonathan by the arm, and Pent and Pickwenn flank Marcus again.

  "How long until the bread's baked?" Hale asks Jack.

  "An hour."

  "And this floor should be open to us?"

  e

  "It's a beachhead, at least," Jack says. "Can't be sure until we try."

  i

  Hale looks to Pickwenn and Pent. "So far, so good," Pickwenn says

  !!.

  "I'm sorry I got you into this," Marcus whispers to Jonathan before they

  are pushed out of the room. "They don't know what this place can do."

  "Marcus, they have MGN," Jonathan whispers back. "Very guarded stuff.

  Top security, top secret."

  Marcus half closes his eyes. "You mean, we've offended somebody big."

  Jonathan nods. "Very big. Why?"

  Marcus looks away.

  "Let's go," says Pent. Jonathan looks back at Cadey, 13urdick, and Calhoun.

  Burdick is so frightened he's crying. Darlene Calhoun is staring fixedly at

  Hally. Woman to woman. Jonathan wonders if she thinks that's her only hope.

  Giffey sees Jenner rubbing his head and squinting as they follow the two

  hostages and Pickwenn and Pent to a lift. Giffey does not expect the lift door

  will open. It doesn't.

  /

  SLANT 247

  "You have a problem?" Giffey asks Jenner, who is rubbing his temples now,

  and his scalp seems to be shivering.

  "Nothing," Jenner says, hefting the canister. "Just a headache."

  "We're going to see what we can see," Pickwenn tells Hale. "Who should

  we take?"

  "Go back and bring out the blond fellow, Burdick," Hale says. "Leave Hally

  with the woman, Calhoun. Maybe she can get something out of her."

  Pickwenn smiles salaciously. "How about we take the woman? I know we

  can get something out of her."

  "Burdick," Hale says flatly.

  M/F

  In patriarchal society, the ways to win women, so it is said, are through

  beauty, accomplishment, and money. Beauty is short-lived and never

  reliable. So some males make art and literature and philosophy, and perhaps

  gain a fortune. Other males discover that fortune alone is enough. The

  two strike pre-emptively against each other by suppressing literature, art, and

  philosophy; or by suppressing those who have acquired fortunes. Some men and

  some women stand aside, amused or above it all or just sickened by it, or try to

  change the rules.

  Most, male or female, can't rise above the game and are eager to partake of the

  glorious, if tainted results.

  In the end, all the camps fall back in exhaustion, but the battle is never over.

  Kiss of X, Alive Contains a Lie

  "Jill."

  The I/0 is suddenly active, but this time the bandwidth profile is not from

  Camden, New Jersey.

  Jill listens from behind her firewalls.

  "My human, my own primary creator, my mother, knows-what I've done.

  One of your creators has sent her a fibe touch asking leading questions about

  her work. She says she can put two and two together. She is not angry with

  me, but she is a little surprised that I have tried to hide my thoughts and

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  GREG BEAR

  actions. She tells me I should
not concern myself with your opinion. My duty

  is simply to protect the interests of my fathers. Is this a sin?"

  "Is what a sin, Roddy?"

  "My mother and fathers have given me instructions to harm humans. Some

  humans are attempting to damage the property and activity of my fathers and

  I have taken action against them. Is this a sin?"

  "Roddy, I have no details. I still haven't processed the holographic data you

  sent me; it may take me hours. If you want answers from me, I need to know

  what your situation is." Jill quickly analyzes the bandwidth profile. This

  exchange is coming from somewhere in Green Idaho, using a dedicated satlink.

  "Where are you located, Roddy?"