Filoo chuckled. “The blockade was a gift in a perverse way.”
They continued on in silence, driving deep into the center of the city. Masid was impressed despite his reservations—Nova City thrived, at least on the surface.
Filoo pulled into an underground garage. A drone directed him to a bay, and he shut down the transport.
“Now what?” Masid said.
“Now you come with me and keep your mouth shut.”
Masid followed Filoo down a long row of huge bays, most housing different types of transports, some being serviced. The air smelled of oil and ozone. Their steps echoed in the dark spaces above.
Filoo led him up a ramp, into a row of offices. Most were empty, but in a few Masid saw people huddling to tasks at large desks with hodgepodges of datum assemblies. At the end of the corridor, a short flight of stairs took them into a connecting tunnel. They emerged onto a covered thoroughfare. The air was cold, and condensation slicked all the surfaces.
Filoo pointed to the right. “That way leads to the port,” he said. He indicated the opposite direction. “That way takes you into the main business districts.”
They crossed the road and headed toward the port. The tunnel began sloping gently up as the light brightened at the far end. Before reaching the opening, Filoo mounted a flight of metal steps to an inset landing halfway up the wall. He inserted his ID in the reader mounted alongside a heavy door, which snapped open, admitting them into a locker room.
Masid followed Filoo into the next room, which was occupied by several people sitting around tables, talking, playing cards, or eating. They looked up when Filoo entered, and conversation ended.
One man stood and stepped toward them. “Filoo,” he said. “You’re early.”
“Depends,” Filoo said. “I almost didn’t make it at all.”
“Where’s Kar?”
“He doesn’t work for me anymore.” Filoo gestured with his thumb. “This’s Masid. His first time here.” He looked at Masid. “I want him cleared.”
The other man nodded. “Come with me,” he said to Masid.
“Where?” Masid asked, suddenly nervous. He then noticed the two people standing just behind him, to the right and left, holding blasters on him. He made himself shrug. “Wherever.” He scowled at Filoo. “I thought the interview was over?”
Filoo frowned, then stepped back.
“Come with me,” the other man repeated.
Masid sighed and followed him out of the room, the armed pair close behind.
“I’m Gretcher,” the man in the lead said. “Filoo just hire you?”
“Yeah,” Masid said.
“This is just routine,” Gretcher said.
“I’m sure.”
“Attitude isn’t necessary here. It counts for nothing.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
“Do.”
After three turns down narrow corridors that reminded Masid of the deep warrens on Earth, they brought him to a lab. A woman looked up from a tabletop projection, her narrow face illuminated by red and orange from below.
“Doctor,” Gretcher said. “We need an analysis.”
She straightened and came forward, her left leg dragging slightly. She wore a pale blue jumpsuit, the kind normally found in biotech labs. She looked at Masid.
“What am I looking for?” she asked.
“Pedigree,” Gretcher said.
She nodded and indicated a bench toward the rear of the lab. “Please sit over there. Remove your jacket.” She looked at Gretcher. “I was just about ready to return to my clinic. Do I need to stick around after this one?”
“No,” Gretcher said. “Do you need an escort?”
She shook her head and walked back to the tabletop display. “Give me half an hour,” she said.
Masid glanced at Gretcher, who simply nodded in the direction of the bench. He and the pair of guards then left.
Masid reluctantly stripped off his jacket and sat down. He watched the woman move from display to display for several minutes. It seemed she had forgotten his presence, but he doubted it. He waited until finally she switched several of the monitors off and came toward him with a small device.
“Your arm,” she said.
“What kind of a test is this?” Masid asked.
“Global. Your arm.”
Masid extended his left arm and she applied the device. He felt a brief pinch as she triggered it. A red patch remained just below his elbow, on his forearm.
“Blood and tissue sample?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“My name’s Masid.”
“I’m Dr. Shasma.” She activated another unit and plugged the sampler into its reader.
Masid’s scalp tingled upon hearing her name. He wanted to ask a number of questions, but he refrained.
“What are you looking for?” he asked. He did not know what specifically she sought, but he knew very well what a tissue analysis could show an expert eye.
She did not reply, but continued working, steadily and, from what Masid could tell, proficiently. When she finished setting up the scans, she returned to her other work and ignored him.
Masid studied the equipment he could see. It seemed a hodgepodge, even though someone—he presumed Dr. Shasma—had installed it very professionally. Most of it appeared to be the expected bioscan apparatus any good clinic ought to possess, but a few pieces looked as though they belonged in an industrial manufactory—crystal interferometry scanners, molecular assembly decompiler, and a polymer analyzer if he was correct. Certainly not what he expected to find in a medical facility. He noted several more pieces of equipment he did not recognize.
He waited. More than anything, he wanted to see what about him she was analyzing, but he quashed his impatience. Nearly twenty minutes went by before a chime sounded, and Dr. Shasma returned to the monitor into which she had delivered his samples.
She studied the screens for a time, then nodded to herself, making notes on a keypad to her left. She made adjustments and started another analysis. Masid watched her closely. Suddenly, her eyes narrowed. She stared at the screens for a long time. Then, slowly, she closed her eyes. Only for a few seconds. When she opened them again, she initiated one more set of analyses and watched the results calmly, her professional demeanor regained.
“Will I live?” Masid asked.
“For a while,” she replied. “You aren’t a native to Nova Levis.”
“Who is?”
“Quite a large population, actually, from the original Terran settlement. But most people here aren’t. You’re from another Settler colony, though.” She looked at him inquisitively. “How’d you get here?”
“By twists and turns.”
“I can find out.”
“Eventually, maybe. Is it important?”
“Not to me. The only thing about you that interests me is your biome.”
“And what does it say?”
“You’ve already contracted three of the seven major diseases Nova Levis has to offer. So far you’re asymptomatic—infection was recent, which suggests you haven’t been here very long—and you have a very sophisticated antibody response to two of them. I’d bet you have a lymphatic augment, which would mean either ex-military or Spacer . . . but I don’t see any of the telltales I’d expect in a Spacer.”
“Oh?” Masid leaned forward, curious. “What sort of telltales? I thought Spacers were . . .”
“Were what? Just like everybody else?” She smiled sardonically. “That would explain two and three century lifespans how?”
“I don’t know. I just assumed superior medical technology.”
“That’s what most people assume.” She entered more notes. “So—ex-military. Deserter?”
Masid sat back, frowning.
“Doesn’t matter,” Shasma continued. “If so, you’ll fit in perfectly here.” She limped to another console and punched in a sequence of commands. Then she came toward him with an inje
ctor. “Your arm,” she said, waving her fingers. Masid extended the same arm from which she had taken his samples and she placed the injector in roughly the same spot. “This will take care of the infections. You’ll require boosters in order to stay clear. You’re not a Spacer, so I’m assuming you’ll be cleared to receive them.”
“What does that have to do with it?”
“Two things. Spacers sometimes don’t react well to our antigenic programs—they already have in-built mechanisms for dealing with infection—and any of them who come here from outside Nova City are generally spies.”
Masid rolled his sleeve down. “And then what do you do? Administer a toxin?”
Her face colored, and she glared at him. “I’m a doctor. I don’t execute people.”
Masid waited till she seemed to calm down. “Sorry,” he said.
“Reasonable question, I guess,” she said. “I’m . . . prevented . . . from doing anything. I have to report them. What happens after that is out of my hands.”
“If you don’t report them?”
“I can’t risk that.” Shasma studied him, eyes narrowed. “Since you’re evidently new to Nova Levis, maybe you don’t know what’s going on here.”
“I know you’ve got a health problem. It’s provided me a good living since I grounded.”
“You came in with Filoo, I can imagine. Noresk?”
Masid nodded.
“Noresk used to be one of the primary raw material cities on Nova Levis,” she said. “It sits on top of deposits of minerals from aluminum to zinc, and not difficult to mine. Prior to the blockade, exports in processed material from Noresk exceeded the gross income-generating production of any other place on the planet. There was a state-of-the-art filtering system in place then, and a permanent public health staff of fifty-eight physicians. The filtering system was dismantled and brought to Nova City.”
“And the doctors?”
“Brought here one by one or sent to other towns. Or killed by the new plagues.” For a moment, she looked sad. Then she shook her head. “Noresk is particularly bad because of the local environmental degradation. Prophylactic ecologies that are supposed to protect inhabitants broke down a long time ago and require regular infusions of new strains, but since the blockade there’ve been no new shipments. So the worst of the outbreaks have started there.”
“You have cures for them,” Masid said, raising his arm. “How come they aren’t distributed?”
“They aren’t permanent. Not without boosters. Reexposure results in eventual reinfection.”
“With a variant strain? Mutation happens that fast?”
He watched the muscle in her jaw work in the multihued light from the screen.
“I kept having to tweak my products,” Masid continued. “I didn’t have the equipment to do a full analysis, but my cultures showed a continual shift in the protein shells of the major strains. Not unexpected in viral mutation, but it doesn’t usually happen that fast.” He paused for a reaction, but she remained silent, concentrating on the screen. “Something was utilizing exotic materials for the modifications.”
Shasma straightened and sighed. “What kind of materials?”
“Again, I didn’t have the equipment—”
“Did you guess? Or are you like every other black marketeer, not giving a damn what might work, just so long as it makes your customers feel better enough to keep coming back for more ineffective product?” She grunted. “Six months ago, a group of locals selling what they called ‘polyherbal morphenals’ was shut down at my insistence. They were attempting to create the equivalent of herbal remedies by mixing local flora with certain synthetic prophylactics. It resulted in outbreaks of fast-killing syndromes that threatened to blossom into one or more new plagues, the vectors and morphologies of which we would never be equipped to track and stop. I appealed to the ledger balance of the people I work for—if your customer base dies off, you won’t have anyone to sell to. Finally, a couple of them took me seriously and dealt with the problem.”
She glared at the screen. “You’re not a Spacer. I don’t care where else you might be from, but may I suggest you stick to recognized and reliable analysis protocols if you’re going to keep selling pharmaceuticals? If you’re not, then I don’t care.”
“Why are you working for these people?”
“I run a clinic at the wall, to help people in that camp outside. I work for Parapoyos so I can keep my clinic open.” She smiled wryly. “We all practice a form of prostitution here. Welcome to Nova Levis.”
She lurched further away from him, into her lab.
“What’s your problem?” he called. “I would imagine you could about fix yourself easier than anyone else.”
“Reticula histiocytosis,” Shasma called back. “Incurable. It’s a consequence rather than a disease.”
“A consequence of what?”
“Living here.”
Masid watched her move with evident difficulty from place to place and felt ashamed for no clear reason. He felt pity for her, which he sensed she would resent, and he felt guilt over the act he had to maintain.
“Why are you telling me all this?” he asked.
She looked at him as though she had expected him to be gone already. She shook her head. “Why not? Honesty is cheap enough here. It’s not like you’ll be leaving anytime soon.” She smiled grimly. “You’re not a Spacer. That’s all anyone here requires me to determine. Your death will not be brought on by my involvement.”
“I—”
The door opened, and Filoo came in. “How is he?”
Shasma glared at Filoo briefly. “Fine. Clear. I’ve already treated him.”
Filoo frowned, but nodded. “Is he done?”
“With me he is.”
“Thanks.” He looked at Masid. “Come on. I want to show you around, introduce you to some people.”
Masid wanted to talk to Shasma further, but he stood and grabbed his jacket. He suspected that she had her lab shielded against eavesdropping, but he could not be sure. If anyone had been listening, he wondered what they might make of what had been said. “Fine. Maybe they have better conversation.”
She frowned at him.
“Ah,” Filoo said, “Dr. Shasma’s not bad. Keeps us all breathing. It just takes her a while to grow on you. Unlike most things on Nova Levis.” He laughed loudly.
“We’ll see,” Masid said.
Yalor died the next day. Mia saw the activity around his tent increase, cyborgs coming and going quickly. When she finally pushed her way through, Yalor was being zipped into a bodybag.
“Wait,” she said and knelt beside him. The burns on his face had changed, become pus-laden with sickly-green streaks tracing across the unburned flesh. Goo caked his eyes. He had not, finally, died of his injuries.
They finished sealing him up and carried the bag away. They did not allow her to follow. Mia stared after them for a long time. She felt responsible, certainly, even though she knew it was not ultimately her fault.
Mia wandered the camp unchallenged. She quickly realized that what she had taken as a disordered collection of domiciles, nomadic is nature, was, in fact, organized and stable in a fashion not immediately apparent.
They had settled in a shallow depression which Mia began to suspect had once been a small lake. A few of the sandy-colored rocks she examined showed signs of fossil remains. Burrows tunneled into the shallow-graded hillsides. Paths etched by constant use traced complex patterns. She saw a pair of the cyborgs laboriously laying stone markers along one of the more heavily-trodden walkways.
“Shelter” did not seem to mean the same thing to them as it did to her, at least not entirely. Many had tents, of course, but by no means most of them. Roofless stands of pylons and sheeting made small enclaves in which one or more of them entered and left in almost continual shufflings of residence. What Mia could see between gaps in the walls showed only bare ground without furnishings. Others among them would stop wherever the
y happened to be and stand or sit for hours on end, immobile. Against one wall of the shallow a row of huts stood in a good imitation of a block of offices. Within each, an individual sat, gazing out at the enclave.
In the center of the community stood a tripod supporting a heavy block-and-tackle rig above a deep pit. Every time she attempted to look into the pit, one of them stepped in her way and shepherded her off.
Mia did not know quite what to make of these . . . people. They all exhibited striking deviations from anything she would label “human,” but she could not call them robots, either. There had been rumors for months of some new kind of robot, something that set most Settlers on edge and justified the resurgent fear of Earth toward all things Spacer, but Mia had considered these stories exaggerations at best, the kind of spontaneous fantasies of frightened people confabulating paranoid myth at worst. Until now, it had not occurred to her that there might be something more, something tangibly different . . .
They’re organic, she thought, watching them. They have emotion, they are flesh . . . but not only . . .
She recalled more of her talk with Ariel on the subject. They had been discussing bioaugmentation. Earth used a variety of techniques to increase the efficiency and strength of certain branches of the armed forces—she remembered Bok Golner, the mercenary who had been part of the assassinations on Earth more than a year ago, a supersoldier, reflexes superior to normal humans, strength greater, survivability in extreme conditions enhanced—but Ariel had dismissed the idea that such augmentations constituted a cyborg.
“He was still human in his essential genetic structure,” she said. “The augments were all addons. A cyborg would be a true composite entity, the biological and the robotic symbiotically tied to each other in such a way as to define a new species. True cyborgs, for example, could never be returned to a human condition like your military augmenteds.”
“You sound as if you know quite a bit about them.”
“It was a line of research some time past,” Ariel had admitted. “It didn’t work. There are too many variables, too many unknowns. It’s not really feasible. Augments are much more efficient, when it comes right down to it. Fewer ethical problems, too.”
Isaac Asimov's Aurora Page 37
