Partials p-1

by Dan Wells

  “It,” said Dr. Skousen.

  Kira frowned. “I’m sorry?”

  “‘It’ has an advanced platelet system,” said Skousen. “You are talking about a machine, Kira, not a person.”

  Kira scanned the room, seeing the senators’ eyes filled with a mixture of distrust and anger, all aimed at her because she was speaking on behalf of their enemy. She couldn’t afford that attitude, not while they were deciding how quickly to kill him. When had she started calling it “him” anyway? She nodded obediently and looked at the floor, trying to appear as unthreatening as possible. “Sorry, just a slip of the tongue. It has an advanced platelet system that allows it to heal cuts and other wounds at an exponential rate — several times faster than a healthy human.”

  Weist shifted in his seat. “And you think its … advanced healing abilities might hold the secret to curing RM?”

  “Possibly,” said Kira, though in her mind it seemed unlikely; she had to make this sound as positive as possible. “Even more likely is something I found this morning.” She was exaggerating this part as well, but she needed to buy more time. “The Partial’s breath contains traces of neutralized RM.”

  The senators made a chorus of surprised noises; Hobb even smiled. Kira could tell they were happy, and plunged ahead. “I was analyzing the Partial’s breath to see if I could find evidence of the airborne virus, what I’ve labeled the Spore, but instead I found an inert, nonviral form of the blood-borne virus. It literally looks exactly like someone took an RM sample and stripped all the functional viral portions of it away — it can’t reproduce, it can’t spread, it can’t do anything. It’s the surest evidence we’ve seen so far that Partial biology holds some promise of helping us combat RM.”

  “I’m impressed,” said Delarosa, nodding. She glanced at Skousen. “Were you aware of this?”

  “She found it this morning,” said Skousen. “I haven’t had time to review her records yet.” The old doctor turned heavily toward Kira. “Are you certain this is a neutralized RM, and not an RM waiting to be activated?”

  I knew he’d call me on that. “I’m still researching it.”

  “It seems premature to present it so definitively when you don’t even know what it is.”

  “What little evidence there is points toward a promising conclusion,” said Kira. “If it were a new virus, we’d see signs of it somewhere — new symptoms, new patients, probably an epidemic. He — it — has been in human custody for a few days, and no one’s getting sick. I’ve been around it longer and more consistently than anyone, and I’m fine.”

  “What if it’s not a new virus?” asked Skousen. “What if it’s the same old RM, which all of us are immune to, so the sample is remaining dormant?”

  “That’s definitely possible,” said Kira, “but my point is that so is the other theory. This could be a good sign, and either way it’s the strongest, most promising lead yet. A more promising lead than I expected to find after just a day and a half, frankly.”

  “There might actually be something to this,” said Weist. He leaned forward, looking at the other senators. “What if there really is a cure?”

  “We proceed as planned,” said Delarosa, and shot Weist a look that seemed, to Kira, surprisingly harsh. “Ms. Walker, I agree with your assessment: Positive or not, these findings are worth following up on. Learn everything you can, and don’t hesitate to ask for anything you need.”

  “I need newborn blood,” said Kira quickly. She grimaced at the gruesome nature of the request, wishing she’d phrased it less grotesquely. “The next time a baby is born, the instant it crowns, I need a blood sample. I’m trying to study the process of infection, so speed is paramount.”

  Delarosa looked at Skousen, who sighed and nodded. She looked back at Kira. “We’ll do what we can.”

  “But what are we going to do about security?” Skousen demanded. “A Voice attack on the hospital would be devastating.”

  Delarosa stared at the same fixed point on the table again, deep in thought. “Mr. Mkele, this is your arena.”

  “More soldiers,” said Mkele, “though we need to be careful with the hospital. If the Voice realize we’ve increased security here, they’re sure to make it their next target.”

  “So let’s move the Senate here,” said Hobb. “They’ll think the increased security is for us.”

  Mkele shook his head. “That only makes the problem worse. The Senate will continue to meet in the town hall—”

  “Are you crazy?” said Hobb.

  “The Voice have already searched the town hall,” said Mkele, drowning him out, “and they didn’t find what they were looking for. They won’t attack there again. Our goal now is to confuse them with too many targets, not to lead them to the next obvious choice. We’ll increase guard patrols around the city, we’ll pull soldiers from LaGuardia, and we’ll add armed, visible police presence to every major landmark in East Meadow. Nothing we do will give them any hints about what we’re hiding or where, and they’ll have to rely on their own, obviously poor, intelligence gatherers. It will buy us time, if nothing else.”

  “How much time?” asked Senator Weist.

  Mkele looked at Kira. “All we need is three and a half more days, right? Then we destroy it and be done.”

  Hobb shook his head. “It’s not enough to just destroy it, like we’ve said before. Word will get out, and we need to appear blameless. It’s the only way to maintain control.”

  “Control?” asked Kira. She remembered the way she’d snapped at Isolde for using that word. Was that really how the Senate thought of them?

  Delarosa turned to face her, her eyes cold and penetrating. “Yes, control. Perhaps you’re aware of the growing unrest on this island?”

  “Well of course, but—”

  “The Voice?” she continued. “The terrorist attacks on innocent people? The very real possibility of a civil war tearing the tattered remnants of humanity to pieces? What do you propose we do with this situation if not wrest it back under control?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” said Kira.

  “But it’s what you’re implying,” said Delarosa. “You are implying that control is bad, and that people, left to their own devices, will sort this problem out on their own without any help from us. You can’t look at the state of the world and honestly suggest that it could sort itself out.”

  Kira saw Kessler leer in the corner of her eye, but pressed forward anyway. “What I am saying is that maybe you’re squeezing too hard. The Voice’s main complaint is the Hope Act — they think you’re exerting too much control over common human rights.”

  “And what is our alternative?” asked Delarosa. “To back down? To give up on our goals for successful, immune childbirth? The future of the human race is, as you so frequently remind us, the vital heart of everything we do. We established the Hope Act to maximize our chances for reproduction — it’s the simplest and best method of doing so, and yes, a lot of people complained, but there comes a point in the life of a species when complaints and civil rights take a backseat to pure, unmitigated survival.” She put her pencil down and clasped her hands. “Do you know what I did before the Break, Ms. Walker?”

  Kira shook her head.

  “I was a zoologist. I worked to save endangered species. At one point I was in charge of the world’s entire population of white rhinos — all ten of them. Two males. Do you have any idea what happened to them when the world collapsed around them?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I opened the gates and let them go free. I relinquished control.” She paused. “One of them was attacked by a mountain lion the same night. I passed its corpse the next morning on my way to the nearest shelter.”

  “So that’s it, huh,” said Kira, trying to ignore the chill that swept over her. “We’re just another endangered species in your zoo.”

  “Do you deny it?” asked Delarosa.

  Kira clenched her jaw, struggling to think of any response that
didn’t play right into the senator’s hand. “There’s more than ten of us.”

  “Thank God.”

  Kira looked at the row of senators, at Mkele standing stoically behind them. She couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “The world is in shambles,” said Hobb. “We know this. What you need to understand is that we are trying to save it the best way we know how. Look around this room: Skousen is the top medical mind in the world, Delarosa is the best long-term administrator I’ve ever met, and Kessler is the reason you have fresh food to eat — she literally created our farm and market program. They work night and day to solve the problems you’re just beginning to understand, and they’ve been doing it since before you knew how to read. There are plans and contingency plans you couldn’t even guess at. Please trust us.”

  Kira nodded slowly, parsing their arguments. “You’re right,” she said. “I said the same thing when we planned our mission to Manhattan: Nothing is more important than making sure we have a future. I was willing to sacrifice anything.”

  “Exactly,” said Delarosa.

  “So then…” Kira paused. “So your plan for the future is the Hope Act, and your plan for control is to kill the Partial, like Senator Hobb said, in a way that makes you look good.”

  “In a way that maintains order,” said Hobb.

  Kessler huffed. “You don’t need to spell everything out for her.”

  “Then what about my work?” asked Kira. “What about everything I’m doing to find a cure — how does that fit in?” She frowned. “Is it even a priority?”

  “Plans within plans,” said Hobb. “If you can find something, we’ll jump on it, but if you can’t … we have to be ready.”

  “Just remember,” said Delarosa. “Absolutely no one can know of this. We brought you into our confidence first because you forced our hand, and again because you’ve proven yourself intelligent and capable. But you must have known this the moment you set foot back on this island: If anyone finds out about what we’re doing, we won’t just have a riot. We’ll have a revolution.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Kira went to the cafeteria instead of going straight up to the lab. She needed time to think.

  What was the Senate planning? Part of her knew they were right, but there was still a voice in the back of her head telling her she needed to be alert. They saw the same problems she did, but their solutions were so different: Kira wanted to cure RM, but they seemed to take it as a means of maintaining control. And yes, they had very good reasons for maintaining control — the society in East Meadow was anything but solid, and the societies beyond, in the outlands, were even worse. They needed strong leadership, a strong hand to guide them.

  And yet.

  She closed her eyes, breathing deeply and switching gears. No more Senate — I need to get back to work.

  Kira walked quickly through the halls, ignoring the bustle around her. She nodded to Shaylon, standing watch by the door, and went inside the lab. The blower hissed, the decontamination circuits buzzed in the floor, and there he was, still strapped to the table, arms extended, face to the sky, eyes dark and solemn. He glanced at her as she came in, then turned back to the ceiling.

  She tapped the medicomp screen to wake it up and found the breath analysis still open; the scanner had finished its task, cataloguing thousands of different particles. Many of them it recognized, both organic and inorganic: the unusual gasses present in exhalation, fragments of shed skin cells, microscopic flecks of dirt, trace amounts of minerals, and a handful of common bacteria. Nothing special. The list of particles it didn’t recognize, on the other hand, was a dozen times longer. She expanded it, scrolling through with a tap of her finger: image after image of bizarre little chemical compounds, some big, some small, all oddly shaped and incredibly strange. She’d never seen anything like them before. As she flipped through them, she noticed that many of the images were similar, and the compounds seemed to break down into several major categories, repeated over and over. She started marking the images, studying the molecules and flagging what looked like key identifiers, separating them into subgroups, teaching the medicomp how to recognize the different pieces. Soon it was flying through the list on its own, dividing the compounds into nine major types with a tenth group of unconnected outliers. It still offered no hint as to their function, and Kira couldn’t discern one by looking at them. Whatever they were, Samm’s body was full of them.

  None of the compounds were remotely as complex as the Lurker, but they still didn’t match with any substance Kira was familiar with — not fabric, not food, obviously not mineral or plastic. She looked over at him, then back at the screen, then pursed her lips and stood up. They were too common and consistent to be accidental, so they obviously had a purpose, and his body would need creation or receptor sites to take advantage of that purpose. Perhaps this had something to do with their resistance? There was only one way to find out. She walked to the table, unlocked the wheels, and started pushing it across the room. She expected Samm to ask what she was doing, but he stayed perfectly quiet.

  She pulled him to a stop at the DORD scanner, a heavy machine nearly as big as some of the cars out rusting in the parking lot. This was the big gun in her laboratory arsenal: a medical scanner that could catalog an entire body, layer by layer and piece by piece. She hit a switch to turn it on, then crossed back to the medicomp while it booted up. The definitions she’d created for the categories of compounds were still there, along with several of the clearest images, and she froze them to the screen before sliding the screen out, disconnecting it from the medicomp, and carrying it carefully to the DORD. The screen had an impressive amount of computing power all on its own, but it was nothing compared to the sensor systems it could attach to. She slid it into the DORD, hearing the click as it locked into place, and a few quick finger taps later the machine was ready to go. The DORD would scan Samm’s lungs, throat, and nasal passages for anything resembling the mysterious compounds, which would give her a good idea of where they came from and where they went. She’d have to intuit the rest from there. Kira raised the sensor array, swung it out, and centered Samm beneath it; it was a thick, heavy piece of equipment in a white plastic shell, easily the heaviest thing in the room, but it held its own weight perfectly. She tapped start, and the DORD whirred to life.

  Kira watched the screen closely, eager to see what the scan turned up. It was not a quick scan. She drummed her fingers nervously on the DORD housing, then turned and walked to the window; she wanted to ask Samm if he knew what the particles were, despite his refusal to talk, but now that the scan had started, any significant motion would upset it. She turned again and watched him, steady as a rock, almost as if he were holding still on purpose.

  She saw motion on the screen and ran to check it; the DORD was already displaying and categorizing some preliminary images. She flipped through the list and opened one for the compound labeled M, a funny little horseshoe-shaped particle. The DORD had found several structures in Samm’s body that it thought might be related to it: one in the nasal cavity and the rest in the lungs. Kira pulled them up, side by side on the screen, and studied them; they looked almost like glands, though not any glands Kira was familiar with. The one in his sinuses was significantly larger, and the DORD had cross-linked it to several other files. Kira opened the list and flipped through it quickly, mildly surprised at what she saw; the DORD had linked that image to every compound it had scanned for thus far. They each had a little gland of their own in the lungs, but they were all connected to the big one in his head.

  Kira studied the gland closer while the DORD kept working. What did it do? She couldn’t just ask the computer to guess, but she could ask it to search its database for partial matches. She started the search and looked back at the image again, buckling down for another long wait, but the results were almost instantaneous: no match. She frowned and ran the test again. No match.

  Guess I’m going to have to do this manually. Given t
hat each particle had two related structures, the obvious first guess was that one structure created the particle and the other one caught it: a writer and a reader. Which implied that they carried information. She ran another search, this time looking for anything in the database that wasn’t human. The DORD found an old file, pre-Break, where somebody had scanned a dog, and she asked the computer to look for partial matches in there. One popped up almost immediately, displaying a structure remarkably similar, though far simpler, than the one in Samm. It was a vomeronasal organ.

  Samm had an incredibly sophisticated pheromonal system.

  Kira pulled up more files, reading what she could on pheromones: They were a system of simple chemical communication, like a form of smell but far, far more specialized. Insects used them for simple things like marking trails or warning one another of danger; dogs used them to claim territory and to signal breeding times. What did the Partials use them for?

  I may as well try asking, she thought. “Tell me about your … pheromones.” Predictably, Samm said nothing. “You have a highly developed system of chemical synthesizers and receptors; can you tell me about it?”

  No response.

  “Can’t blame me for trying.” She thought a moment, looking around the room, then opened the medicomp and pulled out the rubber glove Samm had breathed into. She brought it near his face, pricked it with a pin, and squeezed it as hard as she could, propelling the air directly into Samm’s nose. He coughed and spluttered, jerking his head to get out of the stream of air, but Kira watched in wonder as his demeanor seemed to grow more calm — his heart rate rose as he reacted to the forced air, then fell again almost immediately as he reacted to … something else. The pheromones. His eyes relaxed, his expression softened, his breathing became more even.

  He seemed, Kira thought suddenly, like he was making exactly the same face he’d made in the morning, when he’d agreed to blow into the glove.

  “Kuso,” he said. “That’s not fair.”