Mom smiled. “You were always such a good boy, Corby. I knew I could count on you to talk some sense into la cucaracha here.”
Charmaine stiffened. “Ma, I’m warning you—”
I grabbed Charmaine by the elbow, brushing one of her new abdominal legs, which jerked reflexively. I hustled her out the door.
“I’ll make your favorite, Corby,” Mom called out down the hall. “Grilled mammoth steaks!”
We were on the train heading crosstown before Charmaine would talk to me.
“Mammoth steaks!” she huffed. “I’m lucky if she nukes me a lupinovine chop!”
I felt myself relax a little, the annoying rhymes retreating into some unprobed lobe. At least Charmaine wasn’t going to stick to her sullen silence. Maybe there was a chance to straighten things out.
“You’ve got to let up on Ma, Charm. You know she’s not exactly the domestic type. And life’s been hard for her since Dad died. You shouldn’t block her receptors about her gambling, for instance. It’s really the one pleasure she’s got these days.”
Charmaine stiffened, and her new abdominal additions began to wave like the legs of a stepped-on roach. It seemed she didn’t quite have full control of them yet.
“What about me? Ain’t I nothing to give her some pleasure? Why can’t she take some interest in me and my life, huh? She’s always praising you to the skies. But me—all I get is her gleet and pus.”
“Charm, there’s no need to nasty. Look, Ma likes me better because somehow, I think, I remind her of Dad. And she’s proud of me because I got out of the projex. Not that this job is anything much, believe me. As for why she keeps catalyzing your leukotrines, it’s—”
“I know, I know, it’s the Roaches. Well, I got news for you and Ma. I am not a larva any more, I’m an adult. And my mind is made up. The Roaches are the best thing that ever happened to me. Once a Roach, always a Roach. And pretty soon, I’m gonna be a Roach all the way! And it won’t be any too soon. Because big things are gonna happen any day now, and the Roaches—”
Charmaine stopped herself.
“What? What kind of sneaky-freaky things are the Roaches up to?”
Folding all eight of her arms—two baseline and six add-ons—across her body, Charmaine clammed up, and nothing I said would get her to reveal anything further.
When the train pulled into our stop, we got in line to get off and found ourselves behind a Visible Man. The fright-sight of all his working viscera through his transparent gut-bucket made me want to hurl my cereal.
What a mayday payday this was turning out to be!
Aboveground, we stood for a zepto on the tree-green lakeshore. A tart breeze flustered our hair. Sunlight played on the clean waters of Lake Mitch. Not far from the transit stop loomed the headquarters of the Eater Corps, a subdivision of the GLB Authority. Toward this, Charm and I made our way down paulownia-shady pedpaths.
EC HQ used to be the Shedd Aquarium, back in the last century. But like all old-time zoos and such, with the advent of splices the Shedd had quickly gone out of business. With transgenics of all types—many of them more exotic than anything nature had ever produced—visible and touchable (even, in the case of a Hedonics Plus product, beddable), to be found in street, home, and store, public interest in seeing dull caged specimens had nulled out. All the retro exhibitors had quickly sold their stock as raw lab material and folded. And as far as a zoo’s utility as a repository of endangered species went—well, the Great Restockings had ended that use.
But this old-time tourist diz still retained some connection to animals, which I frequently had cause to think on.
At the door I met up with one of my proxies and fellow Eater Feeders, Sharpy, who seemed in a bit of a flushed rush.
“How’s Ozzie this worn morn?” I asked a bit nervously.
Sharpy’s face was a mass of long drooping folds and corrugated wrinkles, like his doggie namesake. Even when happy, he looked doomy-gloomy. And as now, when actually preoccuplexed, he could make a technogoth resemble a gameshow vannawhite on Pollyannamide.
“The Khan has me scared. He’s just not his old apoptositic self. He’s given all of us the day off to attend an official blyfest over in the Loop. Some kind of sensitivity training in how to deal with Anti-Em demonstraters. Now I ask you, would the Khan we know and detest shed a yocto- tear about the feelings of some friggin’ rifkins?”
Inexplicable as Ozzie’s actions were, they seemed good news for a change. At last on this crazy day, something was finally going my way, and I felt zetta-okay. Until Sharpy’s next words.
“Except you. He’s been asking everyone if they’ve seen you yet. Seems he has a special chore just for Cadet Corby.”
“Mighty Ogun! Now my ass is grass, no sass!”
“Not necessarily. Remember, I told you, he’s not acting like the old Khan. Maybe he’ll go easy on you. But you’d better get in there soon.”
“Right. Thanks for the warning, Sharp.”
“No skin off my dewlaps. Hey, who’s the Love Bug? Want to spend the day with me, Cricket?”
During our conversation, Charmaine had stood in bored silence, wiggling her new legs in a programmed sequence to gain greater control over them. (I hoped she was remembering to take her cecropins.) But now she bristled at Sharpy’s remarks.
“Eat pyrethrum, chordate!”
“Charmaine, please. She’s my little sister, Sharp, and she’s not in a good mood today. I apologize for her.”
“No mammal has to apologize for a Roach!”
“Put it in a vacuole, Charm. Listen, Sharpy—I’ll see you later. I’d better go take my bitter meds from the head.”
I hauled Charmaine along to the office of Cengiz Ozturk.
In the anteroom, I pushed Charmaine down onto the Biospherics slouch-couch. “Stay here. We haven’t finished talking about the probs of our little germline yet. I’ll only be a zepto—I hope.”
“What am I gonna do while I wait?”
“I don’t care if you count your hairs. Raster some vid, you selfish kid. Can’t you tell I’m gonna catch hell?”
This rough talk—which her loving brother never used toward her—seemed to waken Charmaine to the variety of my anxiety, and she sulkily picked up a pair of retinal painters provided for waiters.
“Olivetti Eye Blasters,” she sarcastically intoned. “These are shit.”
The expression on my face caused Charmaine to shut up and don the glasses.
I entered the zig-zaggy light-trap to Ozturk’s inner sanctum.
Cengiz Ozturk was a veteran of the Last Jihad. An officer of the secular Turkish government, he had been among the last evacuees from Istanbul during its seige by the Jihad’s shahada-sicarios and consequently had caught the worst of their assault, taking a hit from a bizarre new weapon.
There used to be a basal disease called xeroderma pigmentosum. Those who had it were so sensitive to sunlight that an average day in the pre-ozone-hole sun would give them cancers and other cyto-malfunctions.
Ozturk had been hit with a designer infective agent based on this retro disease. Now it lurked ineradicable in his soma.
A few photons at the frequency of visible light impinging on his skin today would be enough to trip a cascade of death-agonists throughout his body, resulting in ayotta-painful death.
He had been med-evacked in a light-tight homeopod and installed in an null-photon underground facility, where bonestretchers and cellsmelters could investigate his condition. But in the end all that could be done for him was to adapt his vision to infrared and find him an alpha-symbland desk job.
Which had turned out to be director of the Eater Corps, my boss. And needless to say, this whole experience had left him a less-than-cheerful sort.
As I felt my way down the last zag, I braced myself for the Dow-Hughes shrink-wrap that was the final safety barrier between Ozturk and the world.
I met the bedsheet of pliable film face on and pressed ahead. I really hated this. The semiorganic film w
rapped itself around me from head to toe, sealing shut, pinching off behind, more drawn from the dispenser and ready for the next entrant. Mouth- and nose-holes opened of their own accord. My useless eyes remained hooded.
Now I was no danger. Had I been carrying a weapon, I couldn’t have reached it beneath the wrap. Even if I had a flashlight in hand, ready to fire, the film would have frustrated it by invading the mechanism or reflexively immobilizing my twitchy trigger finger. Sure, there were sophisto ways around the wrap, but who really wanted to smoke an old soldier like Ozturk anyhow? The extra security was just paranoia and status-flash on his part.
I stopped just inside the door. “Uh, Captain Ozturk? It’s me, Cadet Corby.…”
The room was flooded with low-freak illuminating rads, and I could almost feel Ozturk sizing me up with his altered eyes as I stood here blind. What I put up with for this job! But it was still better than the projex—or so I told myself.
At last Ozturk spoke. His voice sounded funny, mechanical almost, and I could see what Sharpy had meant about his not being his old self.
“Cadet, I need your to help conduct a small experiment. You are aware that the terrorist splice known as Krazy Kat has been reported in the vicinity?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I’m very concerned that he not subvert our Eaters. Accordingly, I’ve redesigned their dietary leash. I’d like to run a field trial before switching over entirely, however. Make sure the NOAEL is as simulated. Please take this sample and feed it to the Rivermouth Colony.”
I extended my hand slowly, so as not to trip the wrap’s freeze-reaction. Into my outstretched palm was placed a packet.
“Do you wish to dataglove the leash’s new molecular structure?” Ozturk asked.
“I’m soriy, sir, I can’t use datagloves. It’s my disability—”
A strange satisfied tone crept in Ozturk’s voice. “Oh, of course, I should have remembered. Very well, Cadet, that will be all.”
I held my breath, waiting for some reprimand about being late. But it never came. I had the impression, in fact, that I now stood alone, Ozturk having disappeared into his attached living quarters. I didn’t wait to get kissed or dissed, but figured I was dismissed.
Midway through the light-trap, I was freed by a mist from the shrink-wrap. Gathering up Charmaine—who of course had to complain I was interrupting her S&M vid of “Hot Purple Pain”—I signed out a Skoda Skooter and a Taligent poqetpal and got ready to carry out my assignment.
Riding north through city streets, Charmaine behind me on the saddle-seat, her pinchy insectlegs digging into my ribs as she hugged me, I pondered why Captain Ozturk had chosen me for this mission —it bugged me. Was it a prelude to promotion, a mark of my devotion? Or just sheer chance, no cause for flights of romance?
When no answer came clear, I pushed the question to the rear and motored on.
Soon we arrived at the point on the shore opposite the Rivermouth Colony, roughly six blocks south of Oak Street Beach, where lucky franches basked in the heat.
Charmaine and I stood on the low grocrete jetty painted with the EC insignia and reserved for official use—vehicle moorings and Eater feedings and such—and I pointed out the Eater habitat to her, some half-klick offshore.
Shading her eyes against the lake-sparkle, Charmaine said, “Wow, that’s big! You know, I never bothered to come look at this before. Kinda like a New Yorker never visiting Television City. Is it made out of—rocks?”
“Stones, mud, trees, driftwood, old car parts—whatever the Eaters can scavenge from the lake. They’re master builders.”
There was a note of pride in my voice that was there by choice. After all these years of working with the Eaters, I had become one of their virtue-repeaters. The splices were honest, humble, and dutiful. And despite naysayers, I even believed they were beautiful.
And to think that without a terrorist act, the Eaters would be fiction, not fact!
Twenty years ago, the first designer-waterweed invasion of the GLB had occurred. The initial invader had been a modified Canadian pondweed, Elodea canadensis, introduced into the St. Lawrence Seaway. Its repro-rate was low-mag compared to what followed: Elodea took a whole week to double its initial biomass. Well, the GLB eradicated by lo-tech smart-chem means the infestation of pondweed, only to find itself attacked by an even fiercer milfoil-alligator-weed cultivar. They zapped that too, but it was just the edge of the wedge.
For next came the infamous water-hyacinth/kariba-weed splice.
Within days the entire GLB was declared a disaster zone of plus-minus one kilonader.
Now, a youngster like Sis, who hadn’t even been born at the time of the disaster, might wonder just how much trouble a little nontoxic flowering aquatic plant could cause. Based on the training materials I’d seen, and my own toddler-memory of being taken to look at the enormous floating mats of vegetation, I’d say the trouble was yotta-nasty.
The hykariba (as it came to be called) doubled its numbers every two days, individual plants breaking off from their clonal parents and drifting off to colonize virgin territory. Coalescing in enormous floating rafts two meters thick in some places, the hykariba soon blanketed the entire GLB. The plants impeded shipping, clogged the intake pipes of industrial and drinking-water plants, and contributed to flooding by displacing watermass. As the oldest of the shortlife plants began to decay, they used up available oxygen, axphyxiating fish and phytoplankton. The stench from the big finny kills was incredible. As a last insult-result, the mats were excellent breeding grounds for mosquitos.
It took bioremediation forces from across the whole Union to null the invader. Before they succeeded, the genetically identical mass of plants grew to form the largest single organism in the history of the world.
One of the weapons in the fight had been the Eaters.
Hastily but deftly morrowed out of nutria, manatee, and, of course, human germlines (which is what always got the rifkins so upset), the hykariba-hungry Eaters—otherwise known as mantrias, nutratees, or coypu-cows—were introduced into the devastated ecosystem as fast as they could be turned out by Invitrogen and Prizm, Biocine and Catalytica.
Once the crisis was over the Eaters remained, first line in the GLB’s defense against future intruders. They patrolled and roamed in the waters they called home. Restrained by diet leashes, they always returned to their beaches. Where they were met by a Feeder such as yours truly, who pampered his charges with applause unduly.
“How do you get them to come?” Charmaine asked with what I hoped was unfeigned interest.
“Like this.”
I took the poqetpal out and tapped in my private code. Then I stuck the unit underwater, where it began to broadcast its ultrasonic call.
Within minutes, the first Eater arrived.
Big Eater.
Head of the colony, Big Eater was larger by half than any other nutratee and twice as smart. Befitting his leader’s rank, the head bull was the only one in the colony who had the speech feach.
Gushing up out of the water like a furry brown torpedo, Big Eater sprayed us in his usual greeting, and Charmaine squealed. Gripping the jetty with his crafty paws, he left the bulk of his body still underwater. Rivulets ran from his coypu-cow muzzle, off ears and jowls that were part of his special gene-puzzle.
Big Eater smiled. “Cor-by. How are you?”
I tousled the sleek oily fur. “Doing okay, Big Guy. How’s the missus and all the little calves?”
“The she is good. The lit-tle ones are good. We eat. We watch for bad things. We sleep. We build. Life is full.”
“Great, great, I’m glad to hear it.”
Charmaine squatted down beside me. “Can—can I pet him too?”
“Sure. Big Guy, this is my sister, Charmaine.”
“Char-maine, hel-lo.”
I watched Sis instinctively scratch Big Eater’s favorite spot, right behind his ears. She seemed to have reverted to her innocent chrono-years. “Oooo, he’s a real t
eddy-weddy, yes he is.…”
Unable to resist a prod, I said, “I thought you Roaches weren’t keen on mammals.…”
Charmaine instantly got all hard. “Humans are what we hate, the privileged ones. These poor splices—they don’t bear any responsibility for what they are. We show solidarity with all downtrodden species. And someday —”
“Someday what?” Charmaine didn’t answer. “You know, you’re almost talking Krazy Kat-style trash. You might even get arrested for it if the wrong people heard.”
Standing, Charmaine said, “I don’t care. We’re willing to fight for what we believe in.”
Before we could argue anymore, Big Eater interrupted. “Why did you call me, Cor-by?”
“Oh, right. It’s time to try a new pill.” I opened the packet Captain Ozturk had handed me.
Big Eater seemed puzzled. “It has not been e-nough days for more pills.”
“I know. But this is a special pill. Protection.”
“Pro-tec-tion?” Big Eater looked fierce. “Who wants to harm the pod?”
“A bad splice,” I said, ignoring Charmaine’s impolite snort.
Big Eater pondered. “I will get the o-thers.”
He was gone with a splash, we hung in like a rash, soon they came en masse.
Now, most Eater Feeders, lazy CivServs that they are, just broadcast the pills on the waters and assume every coypu-cow will snatch one. They don’t really care if an individual misses out and dies a nasty programmed deficiency death shortly thereafter, all hemorrhages and tachycardia. After all, they’re just splices, right? You can always breed more.
I didn’t buy it. I always fed my charges individually. It was my job.
So now, as Big Eater watched proudly from the sidelines—he was always the last to get his dose, insuring that all his pod were provided for first—I doled out the new pills one by one to the mantrias as they surfaced, gulped, and disappeared, a never-ending stream of whiskered snouts.
About halfway through —twenty minutes and fifty mantrias —I noticed out of the corner of one eye that a young nutratee had approached Big Eater and was chittering something at him. Big Eater swam up to the jetty.
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