Gaia's Toys

by Rebecca Ore

  “DNA recombinant labs are very expensive,” Dorcas said. She uncapped the wasp’s jar. The wasp crawled out onto her hand. It was larger than the biggest hornet I’d ever seen, but slim like a wasp. It breathed. My skin crinkled in goosebumps. My body thought a wasp breathing was too eerie.

  Dorcas said, “If you trust her, she won’t sting you.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Who’s asking?” Dorcas said. She gently maneuvered the jar lid to recapture the wasp.

  “I don’t need to know,” I said. If the insects worked, humans could be humans again, without unnatural self-control, without having to turn part of our own population into the non-human. “But you’ve got enemies.”

  “Were you really one of those ecological Luddites?”

  “Yes.”

  “What I’m doing is tampering monsterously with the ecology, so maybe you really hate me.”

  “The wasp didn’t think so, did it? Can I go now? I’ve got to pick up a friend.”

  “I want to talk more about this,” Dorcas said.

  “Sure. Does Henry, Dr. Itaka know?”

  “He wants to make people immortal. I hate the idea.”

  I said, “Don’t tell anyone anything. I’ll be back Monday.”

  “I need to have someone to talk to,” Dorcas said. I suspected that now she’d confessed, I wouldn’t be able to shut her up. Keeping my eyes on the wasp in the jar, I backed out, picked up Marcia at the Windermere, and went home.

  Mike wasn’t in. Probably busting Dorcas, I thought. I decided I might as well go on to the rec mall and loaded a day pack with the clothes I’d need for the weekend. Two nice things about rec malls: instant security and freedom from large backpacks. I scribbled a note for Mike, pulled on a cap, and got back on the subway. At the George Washington Bridge bus station I had to wait around for pass card space on the bus. The bus station was noisy, clattering cups, people walking around in bicycle shoes with plastic cleats, other hikers with various sizes of packs, ropes, clanking carabiners and chocks. Some people were headed to the rec malls; others were going to hike in open air. I wondered if any of us sitting here besides me had spiked trees.

  A bus with pass space came in about nine p.m. I hoped that I could hike to a camping space before midnight, wasn’t quite sure what I’d do if the mall was full. Go home? Through the night?

  Where had my nerve gone?

  About five people got out at the rec mall. It was longer than three football stadiums, smaller than the Southern California mall, maybe a few stories taller. We all hiked in from the bus station to the forecourt.

  “Lighted or moonlight?” the scheduling computer asked. “Willing to be assigned to a group?”

  I punched moonlight, yes. The computer asked for other singles willing to share a space. Two people, one man, one woman with long black hair, came forward. I wondered if either or both were with the Feds, but I was beginning to get sleepy.

  The guy had the decency to look nervous. The machine issued us each a map marked with our campsites. “You are not required to walk together,” it told us.

  But we did go in together. “You’re on Welfare, aren’t you?” the guy said.

  “Yes,” I said. “The state has lotteries to give us little perks.”

  “The people I work for want to put me on Welfare,” he said. “Does it hurt?”

  I said, “Make sure they give you the subdermal model.”

  The woman didn’t say anything, just pushed her hair back, her left hand spread between the index finger and all the others.

  The man asked, “Have either of you ever hiked to the Appalachian Trail?”

  The long-haired woman said, “I heard it was dangerous to women and gay guys until you were about fifty miles from Manhattan.”

  I said, “Heard the same.”

  The man said, “You can take a bus up to a trail crossing in the Catskills, from there it’s not so bad. When I have my vacation, I think I’ll do that.”

  Poor bastard would get lots of opportunities to hike if they put him on welfare. I said, “I’ve got a hair-head boyfriend. He takes me sailing when I’m not working.”

  The woman said. “Hair-head? Working?”

  “Yeah, that’s what we call you. And that’s what we call the time when we’re connected to computers.”

  “You don’t work,” she said.

  “If we’ve got it so easy, you wanna volunteer for welfare?”

  The man said, “So Welfare doesn’t lobotomize you.”

  Perhaps that explained why so many of the drode heads seemed like copies of people. “My rig’s experimental,” I said. “I’m not like most drode heads.”

  We hiked on through real plants and holograms until we reached the campsite. The supply and tent-setting machines were just rolling back into the walls. They’d give us a large three-room tent, but had left the sleeping bags in stuff sacks by the picnic table.

  We looked at each other and all slept alone. In the morning, I saw the cougar option trail. “Is the cougar real?”

  The dark-haired woman said as though I was stupid, “No, it’s a puppet. Too many crazies coming from the city to risk a real cougar.”

  “I still want to see it,” I said. I left them and went toward the cougar preserve. Fifteen minutes later, in the trail ahead, I saw a steel door hanging in the air between two rock faces. Up close the polycarbonate surround was obvious, smudged by a large cat paws and nose. I signed the release and went in to see how a robot cougar compared to the real cats I’d seen in Western wildernesses.

  The door said, “Get in quick before the cat comes.” I pushed my hand against the control plate, leaving fingerprints, and entered. The trail turned at right angles and a cougar loped up, not a stalking charge, then paused about thirty feet from me. Her tail rose like a house cat’s, curled over to one side. If this was a robot, the swollen teats were authenticity-overkill.

  Kearney said, “Pretty, isn’t she?” He was sitting on a long tree limb over the trail, looking like he could drop on the cougar, break her neck.

  I said, “I thought she was supposed to be a robot.”

  “Not quite a robot. Did you have anything to report?”

  “Can this cougar be tapped?”

  Kearney said, “Why do you ask?”

  What to say? How much longer would I live? The cat could cover it up. I wondered if the rig in my brain would snag in her teeth or poison her.

  Tell some of it. “I was tapped.”

  “You were tapped? You disappeared offline for five minutes.”

  “Yes. I don’t know by who, but Dorcas is the one making the insects. She wants a lab, tenured track position.” The cougar came over and rubbed her body against my leg. I rubbed her head behind her ears.

  Kearney said, “Did you tell her what you were?”

  “I went to the second level cover, told her I was a busted eco-freak. Didn’t tell her you guys could listen in.”

  “Tapped by your old friends?”

  “No,” I said, realizing seconds later that Loba told me they’d been behind the eco-warriors. The cougar looked up at me with half-lidded eyes. “Dorcas had a wasp. It reacted when I was scared angry.”

  Kearney didn’t speak, just leaned forward on the tree limb, his legs wrapped around it. The cougar looked up at him and lashed her tail slightly. Should I deliver Loba and all her crew to Kearney? I looked at the cat, wondering if anyone controlled it.

  “Please, Kearney, I’ve done what you asked.”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Allison, who’s behind Dorcas?”

  “Nobody.”

  “You sure.”

  “Kearney, no, I’m not sure.” I could save myself, tell him about the consortium that wanted Dorcas and her equipment. “But she’s got access to everything she needs for the work right there at Rockefeller, doesn’t she? And if she worked for you, you’d watch her every move.”

  “Our profile on you is so good we kn
ew you’d come to see the cat,” Kearney said. “You’re predictable, Allison.”

  If he had an accurate profile, he’d have known not to try to humilate me. But then I didn’t want to say, I left a note for Mike where I was going. You had fifteen minutes to trace me once I told my companions I was going to see the cougar. “Kearney, do you like squashing me like a bug?”

  “Strange choice of simile,” Kearney said. “When were you planning to report to us?”

  “I thought you were reading me all along, listening to what I heard.”

  Kearney said, “We wanted your full cooperation. You went out of the loop for five minutes. What happened?”

  “I don’t remember. Kearney, if you’re going to kill me, do it and be done. Quit bullying me.” If he hadn’t bullied me, I might have given him Loba. But not now, I wouldn’t, not conciously. I’d thought that while Mike could be dumb, Kearney was brilliant, but was he really?

  “We want you back for a full reading.”

  Loba said she’d read like a dream. Could I trust her? My head went to the best technicians. “Now?”

  The cougar began pushing against my legs, herding me toward the steel door. Kearney jumped down from the tree limb and walked behind us. I asked, “Is it trained?”

  “It’s a robot.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said. “I can’t imagine why anyone would build a lactating robot.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Kearney said, but the cat looked back at him. I wondered if cougars played with people who were afraid of them. Housecats certainly did. Kearney moved his hand. Cougar kitty was trained to gestures, obviously then.

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” I said. She was obviously well-fed and lonely. Motherhood hormones made her affectionate. Maybe she wouldn’t trust males so much now either? I rubbed her ears.

  “Allison, whatever the thing is, it doesn’t go through the door with us.”

  “I’m supposed to meet some people tonight at our campsite.”

  “The machine will tell them you were reassigned.” Kearney gestured again at the cougar. Pure cat, busy getting her ears rubbed, she ignored him.

  “I could shoot both of you.”

  “Kearney, quit being so melodramatic. We’ll let you out of the door first.” I wondered how many generations of cougars bred in captivity lead to this big kitty.

  “A robot would have obeyed the hand signals,” Kearney said. The cougar turned her head at the sound of his voice. He signaled for her to go back. She wanted through the door.

  I had to smile. Kearney pulled a cellular phone out of his hip pocket, spoke the number, and said, “Send something to take care of this cat. Why did you tell me it was a robot?”

  I wondered what the answer was. Perhaps city people might feel freer to torment a real cat but would fear machine retaliation. Don’t mess with the machine kitty, it’s got cousins in all sorts of shapes can put you straight down.

  Two footlocker-sized robots came out of the wall, rolling on tracks like miniature tanks. The cat decided getting through the door wasn’t worth it. She darted back toward the dogleg in the trail.

  “Now,” Kearney said, motioning toward the door.

  We walked out. The door closed behind us, the robots rolled back into the walls. I said, “I guess if a man’s had his hand up a woman’s cunt, he never will take her seriously.”

  “We didn’t have a matron with us, Allison, when we caught you at the bomb site. Did someone approached you, someone from the old days?”

  Pawn, I was just a damn pawn. “Kearney, I don’t want to go back to Rockefeller.” I suspected I was a pawn for the ecologists, too, knocked off the board about a year and a half ago when Loba and her friends weren’t paying attention.

  “Have we lied to you since you agreed to work with us?” We left the trail section for the forecourt shops and restaurants. Mike, looking anxious, was waiting in front of an Italian restaurant.

  I said, “He didn’t kill me yet.”

  We went inside the restaurant. Not many patrons at 10:30 on a Saturday morning. Kearney said, “Allison says it’s Dorcas Rae, but Rae’s screwed her way from postdoc to postdoc, so I wonder.”

  Can’t take a woman seriously if lots of men have had their hands up her vagina. “Maybe her bosses screwed her because she was so bright and they wanted to put the sexual whammy to her to get her ideas.”

  A waiter in the Italian restaurant seated us and handed us menus. Kearney said, “The question now is does she have help.”

  I was supposed to feel part of the team again, eating osso bucco at government expense. Sitting with two hair-heads made me feel sleazy. I’d learned the drode heads’ do’s and don’ts. When not working, a decent drode head avoided the hair-heads. I said, “So far, only insects.”

  Mike said, “What is she trying to do?”

  I said, “She’s working for the insects. Even before her, they could hold their own against us better than any vertebrate and most other invertebrates. If you’re looking for allies against us, they’re the best bet. I think she hates people.”

  Kearney said, “But I remember what you did to the mantis.”

  Mike said, “Empowering insects. That seems like a particularly female thing to do.”

  Every waiter in the restaurants works for the Feds, I realized, or has been replaced by a Fed for this morning’s little chat. As empty as it was, the restaurant hummed with background chatter, but when we stopped talking, a waiter came to take our order.

  I ordered octopus.

  After the meal, we left the restaurant. I thought I saw Willie but wasn’t sure whether I saw him for real or if I’d just been wishing he’d been around. Outside, a grey limo with a microwave antenna on the trunk pulled out of the parking lot and stopped at the curb in front of us.

  I wished the guardian robots worked for me. Mike got in first, then me. Kearney popped up a jump seat and sat facing us. He said, “Someone contacted you through the net, whether or not you remember. We’re going to put you back on and see who comes to watch.”

  I said, “Dorcas nearly made me. Why don’t you let me continue on schedule, go back when I’m scheduled to go back?”

  Kearney said, “But you told me you didn’t want to go back to Rockefeller University.”

  “I don’t.” I looked out the window at the industrial hazards lands, the superhighways looped on steel intestines dangling in the polluted air. “But if I’m suddenly back online during my time off, then they’ll suspect a trap.”

  Kearney said, “You’re probably right. We’re going to read you on a secure machine. If we like the read, Mike, can you take her back out on the Sound for the rest of her time off?”

  “I’ll have to call my friend,” Mike said.

  “We’ll rent you a boat,” Kearney said.

  I said, “Rent something big enough for ocean sailing.”

  Perhaps I could get to Willie, get his friends to rescue me. What could his friends do?

  Kearney said, “No, we’ll have men watching from both sides of the Sound.”

  Mike said, “We could use the coastal monitor system.”

  But first they’d do a complete read, on private equipment unlinked to even the central power grids, much less the network. “The read will be clean,” I said, “Why don’t you trust me enough to let me go ocean sailing? You can watch by satellite.”

  Mike, an obvious blue water man, was tempted. Kearney said, “If the read proves you lied…”

  I understood I wouldn’t wake up. The body might continue to move, but the personality would be gone, a mock woman to catch bugs with.

  The limousine pulled up to a building on Cuonties Slip down by the water. I walked through the Nineteenth Century facade into a hall padded in brown soundproofing. Kearney steered me into a room with a read-head couch, a computer, a wall that was all computer monitor, and a tray set up with vials of pharmaceuticals and disposable needles. I didn’t look closely at the drugs. Mike stood at the door and said, “I’ll get the
technicians.”

  I stopped remembering from there, short-term memory caught in blackness.

  TWELVE

  REALITY IS ANOTHER ESCAPE

  Willie caught his mantis trying to reach the loft’s fire escape several times. She found a crack in the glass and pried at it with her front legs, then drummed against the glass, flicking out with the preying legs. The other people in the loft avoided Willie when he tried to keep her away from the crack. Although she was restless, she gave off less and less, then finally none of the pheromone that tranquilized humans.

  Then one day, Willie caught her eating the head of another mantis while the beheaded male body humped her. His mantis couldn’t get through the hole she’d finally broken at the crack, but the male could. Willie wondered how the male mantis’s owner detoxed from the mantis tranquilizer. His must have switched over to her own species’s attractor. Standing over the two mantises, Willie felt a mix of revulsion and pity for the male. For his mantis, he was grateful for what he’d had and for the gradual reduction of the tranquilizer. Impregnated by the dead male, she’d now lay eggs, probably die. Ordinary mantises died after laying eggs, but perhaps this extraordinary one wouldn’t.

  But perhaps she should. In the male’s thrusts, he remembered what bugs made him do to his own cock.

  The female mantis finished eating the male’s head, then looked at Willie and thrummed.

  He didn’t care what the Industrial Accidents Consortium thought, he had to find the woman who designed the mantises and ask her if they bred true.

  Maybe I’m on the wrong side, Willie thought, but then he wondered who really welcomed him to their side.

  He went to the main part of the loft and said, “My mantis broke through the cracked glass and let a male in. Why didn’t anyone stop her?”

  “We didn’t notice,” Laurel said. She and Loba were sitting with earphones on, listening to some digital tap, keyboarded in, reading a screen. Willie wondered why they didn’t use him. But the system might recognize him by the software he had in him. His link was adapted to his brain.

  Willie stood watching the women keyboard. He wondered if he ought to do something for his mantis, but he couldn’t face her right now. He pulled on his drode head wig and left the loft. If he rode the subway, Welfare would have a record of where he went. He’d walk up to Rockefeller University and no one would be the wiser.