Genesis Force

by John Vornholt

  “What have you got?” she insisted, pestering him until he opened the bright purple and gold-striped bag. From long practice, he hunched down, and she moved in close and spread her arms to shield his actions from passersby.

  Farlo rummaged through the meager takings. “Six garnet beads, a sea-worm pin, and a transit pass.”

  “To where?” she asked with boredom.

  His eyes widened as he read the runes. “Stone Spire. Hmmm, that’s worth something.” It was only worth something because the Bureau of Culture limited the number of visitors to the historic site.

  “Another couple of garnets,” she muttered, “but I’ll take the pin.”

  Farlo intended to give her the sea-worm pin, but he hesitated, because he hadn’t really inspected it yet. The pin itself was sharp and long, for holding together thick folds of fabric, and the ornament depicted a graceful sea dragon in blue enamel and golden jewels, perhaps topaz. It might be worth more than the rest of the stuff combined.

  Candra held out her hand and gave him a patient smile, because she knew he always gave the girlie things to her. “Okay,” he said, handing over the pin.

  She promptly stuck it behind her lapel, out of sight. “We might bump into the former owner.”

  “No kidding,” agreed Farlo with a chuckle. His voice was changing, and when he was winded he sounded like one of the yodeling warblers who entertained the crowd. “How about this other one?”

  The second bag was smaller, black, frayed, and Farlo didn’t hold much hope for its containing great riches. As usual, Candra moved in close to shield his actions from passing eyes. From this bag he removed a watchbug in a round crystal, three aquamarines, and a garnet, plus a curious ebony cylinder, which looked like a very expensive pillbox, or perhaps a container for makeup. Candra instantly reached for it, but he dropped the goods in his puffy laced shirt.

  “You got yours,” he whispered. “That pin’s worth more than all the others combined. One thing’s for sure, we’ll have enough for a meal, a wash, and a room in the esplanade. Do you want to knock off or try for more?”

  “Why don’t we go see the Wishman?” asked Candra excitedly.

  Farlo mulled that over. He wanted more beads, but he also wanted to hang on to these goodies for a while—to get to know them better. Candra was impatient as usual, and she wasn’t much into material goods. Of course, collecting objects was pointless when you lived on the street and could hide only a few meager belongings.

  “New clothes, I fancy!” said Candra, spinning about as if imitating a dancer. Her red hair flowed behind her as she spun. “Something which shows a little skin.”

  Farlo scowled, because they always had this argument. “Listen, you’ve got to keep dressing like a child. If you start to draw too much attention, we’ll never be able to run our scams.”

  “Oh, pooh!” she answered in mock anger. “Do you really think I would attract men’s attention?”

  “You could land a couple of husbands right now,” he said, waving his hand in dismissal. “But not with me—I like staying a boy. No jobs or stupid rules for me.”

  “You’re not going to be able to stay a boy forever,” she said knowingly. “Come on . . . the Wishman!”

  “Oh, all right,” Farlo said, giving in. He glanced around the pillar and saw the crowd indulging in their usual gaiety for a leisure day—early birds looking for bargains, diners searching for food, and would-be lovers looking for love. Nobody seemed to be looking for them, which struck him as odd, considering the quality of the loot they had just nabbed. Then again, it was a big crowd, and they had been moving swiftly, zigging in and out, grazing their victims without overtly mugging them.

  He giggled at Candra and sprinted between two food tents into a side street, which was also choked with Aluwnans headed to the square. His friend followed him at a distance, and he had the feeling that he might be able to lose Candra if he tried hard enough. It didn’t matter, because they both knew their way to the Wishman, and it was probably best if they didn’t travel together. At a trash disintegrator, Farlo got rid of the beadsacks; then he jogged down an insignificant side street, keeping up his lead on Candra. For some reason, the loot in his shirt felt ponderous and bulky, and he wondered whether he should hide it rather than take it to the Wishman. Since this route was a favorite of his, he knew of a decent hiding place under a local transporter booth, where there was a loose brick. Then he could use the same machine to get to his destination.

  The hiding place was on another side street in front of a small apothecary, which was closed on leisure day. The crowd had thinned by the time he reached the narrow thoroughfare, which was good, and no one paid him any attention. Farlo crouched down behind the blue enclosure and hurriedly removed the loose brick under its back left-hand corner. The boy had dug out the ground underneath, making a perfect stash hole; but this wasn’t a waterproof hiding spot, so he couldn’t leave his goodies here for long. Keeping the beads for expense money, Farlo squirreled away the transit pass to Stone Spire, the watchbug, and the ebony cylinder.

  But he couldn’t leave the cylinder alone—he had to pick it up for one last look. When he did, he must have triggered something, because a whiff of perfume shot him in the nostrils. The boy almost sneezed, but he managed to grip his nose in time. He quickly buried the cylinder as he intended and replaced the brick.

  Just as he stood up, the blue enclosure glowed with a bright green light for a moment and disgorged a constable—a strapping female with gray triple eyebrows and a four-foot-long stun stick. Farlo looked away quickly, trying not to appear interested in the peace officer, as he pretended to study a viewscreen in the window of the apothecary. From the corner of his eye, he saw the constable consult her handheld scanner and march off toward the celebration in the square.

  Whew, that was close, thought Farlo with a relieved sigh. He hoped that Candra wouldn’t get caught, but she probably wasn’t doing anything that looked suspicious, at least not now. Before the constable came back, he slipped into the booth and said, “Watermill Station, level four.”

  “Transporting,” said the polite computer voice, and Farlo felt the familiar tingle as his molecules were disassembled, condensed, and dispatched to another destination thirty measures away.

  He felt a rush down his spine as his body was reassembled in a dingy transporter booth in the underground complex that supported the capital’s main water-treatment plant. In this massive cavern, there was a square, but it wasn’t warmed by glowing sunlight and filled with people. It was gray and dark with a tiled floor that was stained and damp. The sound of rushing water came from three artificial waterfalls that surrounded the plaza, and low-end shops and residences formed an outer ring around the cavern. A dozen watermill workers strolled across the expanse, headed home after their three-unit shifts.

  Although there were shops and offices on this level, most were closed for the leisure day. A stretch of storefronts had been taken over by squatters, those of low breed who couldn’t claim standard housing on the surface. Their little children played in the great chamber, their laughter echoing across the towering space.

  Farlo stepped away from the transit booth and looked around for his friend Candra. Not seeing the vivacious redhead, he took a circuitous route behind the waterfalls to a pedestrian ramp that led upward to the surface. Here were more squatters’ abodes, some he had stayed in himself. “Hello, Tagger,” he said to one elder, who grinned at him toothlessly. “Keeping warm, Lonya?” he asked a thin woman who roasted urim nuts on a small stove all day long.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she answered with a cackle. “Want a nut?”

  “Just one,” answered Farlo. She tossed him a steaming brown and black nut that had cracked from the heat, and he juggled it as he continued to stroll up the ramp. Even though he walked slowly and kept glancing over his shoulder looking for Candra, he never spotted his friend.

  Farlo was alone when he reached a small store with a blazing sign that read
WISHES. Dusty electronics, hand tools, artist’s supplies, and musical instruments were hanging in the dirty display window, but he had never seen anyone purchase these used objects. A chime sounded as he entered the store, and sensors dispensed a whiff of freshener into the air, meant to hide the musty odor of the old goods. Behind a counter stood a white-haired man with six white-haired eyebrows, three of which he raised when he saw Farlo enter his establishment.

  “Shhh!” cautioned the old man, putting his fingers to his lips as he slipped past the boy and gazed out the door. Content that no one had followed Farlo or was lurking on the ramp, the Wishman shut the door and locked it.

  He rubbed his hands together. “Okay, boy, what have you got for me?”

  The lad shrugged and looked out the window. “I don’t really have much—it’s Candra who has everything.”

  “Okay, where’s Candra?” he asked impatiently. The boy shrugged again, and the old man scowled and paced across the dusty floor of his establishment. “Never trust a girl—someday you’re going to have to find a new partner, a cute, small one. If she gets caught and gives my name to the Office of—”

  “She won’t,” scoffed Farlo. “She won’t ever get caught.”

  “I don’t know,” said the Wishman, nervously twisting his twelve fingers. “Something is wrong, I can feel it. Something bad is going to happen—maybe another crackdown on the low breeds. Maybe there will be a new conscription for public service. I don’t know, but I can tell you that something is changing up there—I’ve seen too many constables today.”

  A rap sounded on the door, making both of them jump. They whirled around to see Candra motioning to them to unlock the door. Farlo did the honors, while the proprietor scouted the walkway.

  After ducking inside, Candra hid behind a bass drum in the corner of the window. “I think I lost them,” she breathed.

  “Lost who?” asked the Wishman worriedly.

  “Oh, some spoilers,” she answered. “I don’t know how they knew it was me.”

  “And you led them here?” shrieked the Wishman.

  “I don’t see anybody out there,” offered Farlo. “Old man, you’re acting like a third husband. Today is a normal leisure day, and everybody’s happy.”

  The Wishman made a sign to the sky. “May the Divine Hand hear your words and move to protect us.”

  “I don’t want to stay here long, anyway,” said Candra, moving closer to the old shopkeeper. “What do you make of this.” She turned back the lapel of her stiff white jacket and showed him the exquisite sea-worm pin.

  “Oh!” gasped the elder, squinting at the prize. “I’ve never seen one like that. You must get out of here with it.”

  “What?” asked Candra. “But I need—”

  “To leave!” he barked. “You, too, boy!” He pushed them both toward the door and yanked it open just as two broad-shouldered constables muscled their way into the store. One was female, one was male, and both looked young, strong, and determined.

  “Here she is!” he said, pushing Candra toward the officers. “I told her to take her stolen goods elsewhere! We only deal in legally processed estates.”

  They grabbed the girl by her arms, and she struggled futilely for a moment, until the male officer jabbed her with his stun stick. Candra collapsed to the threadbare carpet as Farlo rushed to catch her. He bent over his friend to protect her from the officers.

  “What is this about?” he demanded. “We’re just down here, looking for our parents. I guess they went ahead to the Summer Palace—we should meet them.”

  The female constable reached down and pulled the pretty pin off Candra’s lapel. “This is a tracer,” she said, “carried by one of our officers to catch thieves. Why don’t you admit it, this time you’ve been fairly nabbed—and no parent would claim a low breed like you!”

  His jaw set firmly, Farlo leaped to his feet and shoved the female officer out of the way. He made a break for the open door and almost got out before the other constable swung his stun stick and caught the escaping lad on the elbow. Farlo howled and tumbled through the air, already unconscious by the time he hit the ramp.

  Four

  His vision bleary and his head throbbing dully, Farlo woke up in a hospital room. Or perhaps it was a laboratory, considering all the blinking equipment, beakers, and monitoring devices. When he tried to sit up, he found that his arms, legs, and torso were strapped firmly to the bed, and he realized it was a prison. Then he could remember all of it—the Wishman, the spoilers following Candra, the stun sticks—

  The lad yanked at his bindings while he screamed, “Help! Get me out of here. I’m innocent!”

  “It won’t do you any good,” said a weary voice.

  He turned to see Candra strapped to a similar bed about two arm’s lengths away. She looked tired, stunned, and several cycles older and wiser. “I’ve been yelling for ten minutes, and nobody’s come in. Plus, they did something to us.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Farlo worriedly. He had heard about these kind of places, deep underground, where they experimented on orphans, criminals, and low breeds. The lad had been captured before, but he had always talked his way out of it, pretending to be a lost child. In his gut, he had known that growing older was going to be the death of him, and here was the proof.

  “There’s a red spot on your neck,” explained Candra. “Don’t you feel a little pain, a little tingle?”

  Now that she mentioned it, he did, but he couldn’t reach his hand to touch the spot on his neck to verify her words.

  “I was waking up when they finished,” said Candra. “They wouldn’t explain what they were doing—they just did it. They pumped us full of something.”

  “No,” said a voice somewhere behind Farlo, “we merely took a DNA sample. Standard procedure.”

  The boy craned his neck to see a handsome, white-gowned man enter the hospital room, or cell. He was groomed impeccably and smelled as if he bathed in perfume, and there was something familiar about his princely face and gracious manner, as if he were an actor from the video bands.

  He strolled between the two bound prisoners and stopped to look at the girl. “Candra, I’m letting you go,” he said. “Well, almost. You are to be remanded to the Bureau of Pleasure, where I believe they’ll find some use for your light-fingered touch.”

  “No, no!” she cried, struggling desperately against her bindings. “I want to stay with Farlo! I don’t want to go to the esplanade.”

  “I’m sorry, the decision has been made,” said the doctor, if that’s what he was. He pushed a button on her bed, and a blue shroud floated down from the ceiling. As soon as she was completely covered, the shroud blazed with the eerie green of a transporter beam, and his friend Candra was spirited away.

  “Will I ever see her again?” demanded Farlo, fighting back his tears.

  “I sincerely doubt it,” answered the man. “You are to have an altogether different destiny.”

  Farlo scowled, not liking the sound of that. “I was happy the way I was living.”

  “Society doesn’t benefit from having more young thieves,” said the man. “Do I look familiar to you?”

  “Yes, you do,” admitted Farlo. “Who are you?”

  “I am the seeress consort, Padrin,” he answered nonchalantly, in a tone that belied the fact that he was married to their queen. In breeding, he was the second-most-important male on the planet, the one who was supposed to guarantee the purity of the royal bloodlines if the overseer failed to produce offspring.

  Farlo let a low whistle escape from his lips. “You’re the seeress consort,” he rasped, astounded that he should be in the presence of royalty. He had never seen a royal personage, except at great distance during a public ceremony. The boy’s voice squeaked as he asked, “What do you want with me?”

  Padrin smiled. “Has no one ever done a DNA test on you before?”

  “No, I never got caught,” he answered proudly.

  The consort laughed. “It’s t
rue, we don’t have any record of you. What is that name you use?”

  “Farlo Fuzwik,” answered the boy. “It’s my real name.”

  “I doubt it,” said Consort Padrin. “Fuzwik is a common name given to abandoned children at the Sanctuary for Public Good. Farlo is common, too. But, young man, you are not common.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Padrin leaned close enough to inspect his prisoner. “Your breeding is a ninety-six-percent match to the chromosome particles of suzerainty. Hard to imagine this was never found before, but then homosynaptic testing wasn’t widespread a dozen cycles ago. You are about twelve, are you not?”

  “Thirteen,” said Farlo defensively. “I don’t know what any of that means, but I didn’t do anything!”

  “You were born,” answered the seeress consort. “And your breeding is better than mine, and the equal of the overseer’s.”

  “What?” asked Farlo, unsure if he had heard correctly. By his station in life, he had always assumed that he was of low breeding—now this popinjay was telling him that he was of equal breeding to Overseer Tejharet? “That’s a bad joke,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

  “I wouldn’t joke about such a thing,” claimed Padrin as he bent down to unfasten the straps that held Farlo to the bed. “For ten cycles, I have searched for such a match—surreptitiously of course. Four hundred genetic engineers, an entire research facility, and an army of field agents failed to find you, because you were too busy stealing beadsacks and evading the law. My boy, you are the law.”

  His appendages freed, Farlo rubbed his wrists and slipped out of bed to stand uncertainly on the floor. “Are you saying I could become overseer?”

  “It’s not that simple,” answered Padrin. “But your offspring stand a good chance, if you marry correctly. Will you hold still while I get a retina scan? That will put you in the system.”