by Rebecca Ore
He went to the front door and asked the woman sitting behind the clear barricade, “I’m here to speak to Dr. Rae.” Why not?
The woman looked startled, then glanced over at a man standing by a monitor further protected by the barrier than she was. The receptionist asked, “What business do you have with Dr. Rae?”
“Tell her Allison’s friend Willie is here.” What that would mean to Dr. Rae, Willie had no idea. Willie felt prickles of interest emanating off the man’s eyeballs. He lifted off his cheap wig and bared his skull at the hairheads.
“Where is your welfare office?” the man asked.
“Roanoke, Virginia, but I’m visiting New York, friends of friends.” Willie believed that his mantis would die after she laid her eggs. One stage in his life would die with her. He’d been addicted to mantises, but his would be kind enough to detox him easy if she died slowly after laying eggs. He’d been revolted by her fucking, but perhaps he did crave that tranquilizing gas. If she died, would she breed true?
“I could go see her at home,” Willie said, having no idea where Dr. Rae lived. He should have asked Allison if she knew, or Laurel in the real time.
“How do you know where she lives?” the receptionist said.
Willie hazarded a guess, “I keep the same endangered species she does.”
The man said, “You don’t keep endangered species. You keep a mantis.”
Willie said, “Can I see her?”
The man tapped into his monitor, then nodded at the receptionist. She spoke into a communicator, then said, “She isn’t here.”
“Fuck,” Willie said. He knew the man would go now to wherever Dorcas Rae lived, or call someone to check. “Well, she did say she might go home and wait for me there.” He decided to walk back downtown to the loft on Hester Street.
Oh, lordie, lordie, what have I done?
Then he realized, looking into a shop window full of suits and shoes he’d never be able to afford, that a woman was following him. Willie wondered if she had perverse designs on him or if she was Dr. Rae. Did Dr. Rae have designs on him? Willie looked further behind the woman, then back at her. She was wearing a wig like a drode head, but her clothes were too fine.
He kept walking, then stopped to look back through a shop window reflection again. The woman was still there. Willie felt old combat training reflexes shift through his body, rehearsing the blows, tweaking the nerves running the muscles.
He kept walking downtown, but didn’t want to show her where the loft was. And they could be trailed by shifting teams. He went down to the supermarket where he’d seen Allison. Two drode head women, one wearing a real human hair wig, faded out of the store. They knew the woman following Willie wasn’t one of them. Hair-heads disguised as drode heads were bad news.
Willie turned to the woman and said, “You followed me.”
“Why were you asking about Dr. Rae?”
Willie looked at her a long while, then said, “I’ve got this mantis. She’s mated with another big mantis. Will she die when she lays eggs?” A real agent wouldn’t come up to him like this. Willie knew this was the insect maker herself, Dr. Dorcas Rae.
“You’re Willie,” the woman said. “Why did you come here?”
“Friends want to know what you’re capable of.”
“Why are you harrassing me?”
“Man was already watching you. They want the mantis maker real bad.”
“Who is Allison?”
“She’s cooperating with the Feds to get out of a sabotage bombing. I brought the problem to the attention of another group.”
“Oh. shit.”
“Dr. Rae, you ought not go home.”
“You bastard. You tipped them off that it was me.”
“The Feds want to be really sure. If they’re sure, they’ll kill you. My group might have a better option, but I’ve got to find a place to leave you for now. First, you’ve got to get shaved and real welfare clothes.” Inside Willie’s head, he kept thinking, My mantis’s dying, but I can get another one. My mantis is dying, but the bitch deserves it. “Stay in the bathroom here. Sit up on a toilet so no one can see your legs. I’ll be back.”
Turn her in and maybe the Feds would fix my head all the way. Yeah, they’d probably nano-cook me into jelly, just to make sure I never talked.
When Willie got back to the loft, Laurel said, “Willie, Allison’s having trouble.”
“I’ve got Dr. Rae stashed somewheres safe.”
“What? Why in the world?” Loba and Laurel looked at him.
“I need some female drode head clothes and a razor. She’s got a wig already, but it’s all puffy from hair.”
“Willie, she could be infiltrating us. Allison, too. Trade us for whatever they did, the Feds would go for it,” Laurel said. “They don’t suspect we exist.”
Little Red came in, limping as usual from his crooked spine. “What’s up?”
“Willie contacted Dr. Rae,” Laurel said.
“Pretty damn undisciplined, Willie,” Little Red said. Laurel said, “The police are looking for her now. She’s supposedly under the influence of an experimental drug.”
Little Red said, “Anyone trained on her will recognize her even in welfare drag.”
Willie said, “Shit, you mean I should just let them have her?”
Loba said, “She makes great insects.”
Laurel said, “We don’t have to explain everything to her. We didn’t to Jergen.”
“What about Allison?”
Laurel didn’t say anything, but ducked her head. Little Red explained, “They pulled her from a rec mall in New Jersey. We hope the contact reads as a dream, but if not, they’ll fry her before she’s out of fugue. Willie, we need Dr. Rae. Allison, well, we can’t afford to trust her.”
“We do feel guilty,” Laurel said. “We’d planned to rescue her…”
“… if she wanted to be rescued,” Loba interjected. “She’s been treated awful,” Willie said. “You fucked with her. The Feds fucked with her. Hackers fucked her.”
Little Red told Willie, “We can’t make everything straight. We’ve got a plan you can use to help Dr. Rae. Laurel, I think we should.”
Loba nodded. Laurel moved some boxes holding geodesic dome panels, then found a suitcase and pulled out a shift, hose, and rubber shoes. She said, “With this shift, it won’t matter what size Dr. Rae is. Bring her down to the ferry. If we don’t pick you up in fifteen minutes, take the next ferry to Staten Island and ride back and forth all night if you have to.” Laurel found a shopping bag, put the clothes in it, and handed it to Willie.
He took the bag and asked, “They don’t implant trackers in the scientists, do they?”
“If they do, we can pick up electromagnetic bursts,” Loba said. “We’ll scan her when we pick her up.”
Little Red went over to look at the screen in front of Laurel. He said, “Go finish the job, Willie.”
“How do I know you’ll take care of me if you won’t take care of Allison?”
Laurel said, “Willie has a point.”
“We’ll talk about it, Willie,” Loba said. “First bring us Dr. Rae. You’ve forced everyone’s hand. Perhaps we should have gotten you another mantis.”
“No, I don’t want to bring you someone if you’re going to kill me or do my memory damage. I’ve been damaged enough.” And thank you very much for that crack about mantises.
“Willie, we trust you. Allison’s a more complicated creature,” Loba said.
“Only because she’s been more complicatedly damaged.”
“Willie, don’t mess with me,” Little Red said. “Bring the woman hacker in and we’ll talk about doing something in exchange for Allison.”
Loba and Laurel nodded. Unified team, Willie thought. He left, hoping Dr. Rae was still waiting in the grocery. At the grocery, he ran into the woman named Marcia, friend of Allison’s. “What is that woman hair-head in the toilet to us?” Marcia asked.
“A vast change,” Willie
said. “Anyone prowling around? She put her feet down or what? Can you buy me a razor? Go in and give her this stuff. Allie would seriously appreciate it.” He found a dollar coin and handed it to the woman.
The woman said, “If Allie says so, maybe.”
“Here’s another coin,” Willie said.
“How you been getting those?”
“I sold my gun collection. Please.”
“Gonna love shaving a hair-head.” The woman drifted off, bought a razor and some other knickknacks, looking at Willie’s distorted reflection in the bull’s-eye mirrors. Willie wondered if the grocer preferred the non-electric to something his customers might shift current out of doing a bit of black time, renting out the drode holes.
Willie suspected shaving a woman’s head would take at least as long as shaving stubble from between the electrodes. He’d always wondered why Welfare didn’t depilate its clients, but then a man would know the caseworkers never expected anyone could get off the dole except by brain infection. Leaving follicles gave a drode head hope.
Twenty minutes. He went to the register and said, “Tell the women I’ll be back in a bit. I’ve got to check on something uptown of here.”
And so, Willie walked downtown and around, thinking about his mantis and the changes he’d been through. Other reflexes, other training came back to Willie. He checked for tails, but knew he’d never spot the switching kind, or the smaller machines. Could be a mechanical pigeon watched him.
He swung back a little uptown of the grocery, looked for cars with microwave antennas, or variable tint windows. Then, he saw Marcia and Dorcas Rae come out. Marcia said, “If someone’s looking for two people, they might not be looking for three.”
Willie visualized a mob of drode heads walking down to the ferry. “You get me together a little mob of us, we’ll confuse them. We could take the ferry back and forth, talking.”
Dr. Rae said, “What if she’s audited?”
Marcia said, “I’m an artist’s puppet. What data can I trade away?”
“We’re just drode heads going for a walk, in numbers for safety,” Willie said. But, besides confusing anyone looking for two or three drode heads, one a fake, this would confuse Laurel and Loba. Oh, well. Willie could spot either of them quick enough if the windows weren’t on deep tint.
“I’ve got to tell my parents something,” Dr. Rae said. “I worry about them. They’ll worry about me.”
“Not now,” Willie said. He took Dr. Rae’s elbow, guided her like he’d been guided when he was freaked. Marcia talked to a few other drode heads, so while they didn’t have the grand procession Willie’d imagined, they had five of them, all walking around in full personality, none fugued out.
Dr. Rae seemed like she was, though. Did she not believe what was happening to her was real or did people like her not face the same consequences for what they did that people like Allison faced? Dr. Rae said, “But if I turn myself into the Feds, I could get my own lab.”
Willie said, “We’ll give you a lab, too.”
Willie didn’t expect they’d actually take the ferry tonight. He was right. The van pulled up beside them and Laurel said, “We’ve got room for two in, if anyone wants a lift.”
Dr. Rae’s eyes looked huge, scared blue almost black. Willie wondered if she had freckles on her newly bald scalp or if getting them would take sunshine. He said, “I’d be curious and my woman friend here.” He still had Dr. Rae by the right elbow.
Laurel said, “Your other friends won’t be ticked?”
“No. they’re just walking the same way. We’re not together in other than the drode head way, safety in numbers and all that.”
“Hop in, then,” Laurel said. She took Dr. Rae’s other elbow. Willie let go and opened the side door and saw the geodesic dome crates packed in already. Laurel and the drode head named Marcia pushed and pulled Dr. Rae in after him.
“Hi, Dr. Rae,” Laurel said. “We’re friends of yours, we think. Willie, your mantis finished her egg case.”
“Dead?”
Laurel asked, “What’s supposed to happen to the giant mantises after they lay eggs, Dr. Rae?”
“Well, they live for a couple of years before they’re fully mature. I didn’t arrange for multiple ovulations, so I suspect they’ll die once their ovaries are mature unless what I did affected other parts of the genome.”
Willie went glum. “You gotta do better than that.”
Laurel said, “Tell us what you need to keep working. We can steal it.”
Dr. Rae said, “I think security is tighter than you imagine.”
Laurel said, “We’ll get you what you need.”
Willie said, “And now we’ve got to get Allison.”
“Where is Allison? Was she really an eco-terrorist? I told her… shit, it’s out of my control, isn’t it?”
“She told the Feds you were the insect maker, but she was only guessing,” Loba said. “But the guys running her thought you might have been covering for someone else.”
Willie began to wonder if he’d joined the wrong team. “Allison’s been captured, brain-scanned, offered suicide. She was strapped down and she thought they’d killed her, but they kept her alive on a respirator. I dunno. I feel a little sorry for her.”
Dr. Rae said, “Who does she really want to work for?”
Loba said, “Willie, did she tell you that while you were sneaking around together on the net?”
Laurel said, “We are going to have enough problems with this one. What if Allison had been working for the Feds from Jergen’s time?”
“I like Allison,” Willie said. “Rescue her. I can read her.”
All this time, the truck was headed uptown, then into the Bronx.
Loba said, “They’ve put her in a fugue and Mike’s taking her sailing.”
Dr. Rae asked, “You can bug the Feds?”
“In a normal’s mind, an armless woman is a disarmed woman,” Loba said.
“Nanotech could grow you new arms. My parents stay young that way,” Dr. Rae said.
“Perhaps having arms might be a good disguise, someday,” Loba said. “But some of my friends were scarred by nanotech.”
Willie said, “What are we going to do for Allison?”
Laurel said, “Let the Feds have her.”
Dr. Rae said, “She used to work for you? What happened?”
Loba said, “The man we’d made contact with disappeared, informed for the Feds, but didn’t give them Allison. Allison contacted our people later. We put her in another eco-terrorist group and withdrew our people, watched to see what would happen to them. The new leader, also suspicious of her, sent her to Louisiana with a baby nuke.”
Laurel said, “The Feds killed him for resisting arrest. That’s probably what would have happened to you, Dr. Rae.”
“I don’t think so. I could have agreed to work for them.” Loba said, “I think they have enough gene hackers.” Willie realized he couldn’t go home again. Well, he had gotten out of his rut. Then he realized neither Loba nor Laurel trusted Dr. Rae. but they were going to scare her into working for them.
Dr. Rae said, “If Willie can read her, then why not rescue her, read her? If she’s really working for the Feds, then you could…” She couldn’t quite think of what, Willie realized.
But Loba could. “If she couldn’t identify us, then we could feed her back to the Feds. But she can identify us. Willie, could you put false memories in her head, edit her?”
Dr. Rae knew her neurochemistry. “You could keep her on continuous short-term memory. A number of drugs will do that, plus a little selective brain damage.”
Willie said, “So you let Allison take chances for you, kept her in the dark about who was funding the eco-warriors, now you want to feed her back to the Feds.” He looked at Dr. Rae, like, Do you think these people rescued you for good?
Loba sat still for a while. Neither she nor Laurel spoke until the van was well out in Westchester County. Then, Loba asked as though she
needed to change the subject, “Why did you build the mantises?”
“To see if I could. To make life easier for the drode heads.”
Willie felt Dr. Rae was lying.
Loba asked further, “Were you doing anything more? On systems for controlling human aggression, perhaps? Or overpopulation? Insects for pollution control?”
“Yes.”
Loba asked, “Why?”
“I was mad.”
“Are you still?” Loba asked.
“Nobody takes me seriously, so I was mad and I could get away with all sorts of pirate projects.”
Loba said, “Why did you sleep with your bosses?”
“What has that to do with anything? They could keep that from interfering with their evaluations of my work.”
Loba said, “They told you this?”
Willie said, “Dr. Rae, guys never fairly evaluate women they’ve successfully lied to.”
“I want out. You’re kidnapping me.”
Loba said, “If you want, we can deliver you to the Feds and witness that you didn’t resist arrest.”
Willie said, “I’d feel a lot better if you rescued Allison. Bet Dr. Rae would feel a bit better, too. I said I’d read her.”
Loba said to Dr. Rae, “Did you get along with Allison?”
“I felt sorry for her,” Dr. Rae said. “How do I know I can trust you?”
Loba said, “We can fund your insect projects. We like them. The Feds don’t. We’ll let you do your own projects as long as you teach us recombinant DNA work.”
“Will I ever be able to walk around like a normal human being again?”
“With modifications,” Loba said. “The Feds might gun you down now if they can’t catch us. At this point, they don’t know we exist.”
Dr. Rae asked, “Willie, why should they rescue Allison?”
“Because I won’t trust them if they throw their friends away. How did the mantis work?”
“The pheromones enhance beta-endorphin production and also tend to be depressants like alcohol. I was trying for a bliss effect. The wing music has some psychological impact also. Are you having withdrawal problems?”
